Charms Around the World (Part 1 of 3) on Cascade Hall

Headmistress Powell

July 30, 2010 3:59 AM

Midsummer Fair Part I by Headmistress Powell

Every four years Sonora would repeat the same Midsummer celebration. This year was, inevitably, the fair. However, unlike the previous fair which had been primarily student-lead, this year left current students free to enjoy organised activities. During the evening, there would be a Muggle-influenced fun fair with rides, food, and game booths. During the daytime, current students would have the opportunity to interact with alumni - Sonora students of previous years who had volunteered to return and share their post-Sonora experiences. For the older years this might offer an insight into future career options, or a first-hand account of their prospective colleges. For the younger years it would be a demonstration of what they could achieve, or what magic, more generally, could do.

The morning of the Midsummer fair saw the Headmistress at the Head of the Cascade Hall (where tables and chairs had been arranged in its corners, leaving the central space clear of furniture, but currently full of students), having already greeted the returning alumni – some of whom were familiar to Sadi, some less so. Many would be familiar to the current students, too, particularly to the older years, who may even have shared classes in the past. It was nostalgic to see so many faces return, and it offered the Headmistress a chance to wonder what her current pupils would be doing by the time the next fair rolled around.

“Good morning,” Headmistress Powell greeted the collection of students, past students, and staff, “and welcome to the Midsummer Fair. During the day you will have the opportunity to discover how Sonora alumni have filled their time since graduating. Talks and presentations will be taking place according to a schedule - which you can find displayed at various locations throughout the building – in the gardens, on the pitch, in the library, and here in the Hall.” Spreading the alumni about provided them with most space and privacy, and the opportunity for students to learn outside the classroom, which Sadi believed was always beneficial.

“A lunch buffet will be served here in the Hall, and during the evening the Quidditch Pitch will be transformed to offer a range of entertainment opportunities.” This had been planned to include rides such as a Griffin-go-round and the more terrifying Wronksi Feint, assorted game booths for prizes, and unhealthy food stuffs such as cotton candy and burgers. It was an opportunity for everyone to relax, for the alumni to catch up, and to celebrate the end of another term at Sonora. Sadi couldn’t believe how quickly this year had gone; this evening she would be announcing next year’s Head Boy and Girl. First, though, she had planned a day of activities that would hopefully be fun and informative. “Arrive on the pitch at six o’clock to join me in opening the festivities. Until then, enjoy your day.”

With that said, and a smile to the assembled crowd, Sadi cancelled the charm that had increased the volume of her voice, and was available to direct people as necessary to the nearest schedule (helped by the Head Boy and Girl, and the prefects, who were in charge of taking care of the returning students). Each schedule was identical, and read:

'In the library
Zack Dill will discuss his education in astrophysics, astronomy and arithmancy with small groups;
Rosalind Rabindra will discuss her experiences of married life with small groups;
Anne Wright with discuss her prospective career in spell development with small groups.

In the Cascade Hall
Morgaine Carey will conduct a presentation on Healer training;
Mia Kerova will discuss her Charms apprenticeship with small groups;
Geoffrey Layne will conduct a presentation on further study of potions;
Helena Layne will conduct a presentation on her work at the Department of Magical International co-operation;
Blake Taylor will conduct a presentation on his current position of Transfiguration professor at Sapient University of Magic.

In the Gardens
Dalila Bastet will discuss her experiences of traveling with large groups;
Catherine Gardiner will discuss her experience of Married Life with small groups;
Saul Pierce will discuss his experiences in the entertainment industry to large groups;
Earl Valentine will discuss study of Art at Sapienti University of Magic to large groups.

On the Quidditch Pitch
Stephen Baxter and Geoffrey Spindler will discuss their enterprise in broomstick engineering to large groups.

Feel free to talk to as many alumni as you choose. If you have any further queries, speak to a member of staff.'

Subthreads:

Charms Around the World (Part 1 of 3) by Mia Kerova [Fair] with

Healer Training by Morgaine Carey, Fair Presenter

The Further Study of Potions by Geoffrey Layne, Fair with Oliver Abbott

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...me! by Blake Taylor

Desk Jobs on the World Stage by Helena Layne with

0 Headmistress Powell Midsummer Fair Part I 0 Headmistress Powell 1 5

Mia Kerova [Fair]

July 31, 2010 12:07 PM

Charms Around the World (Part 1 of 3) by Mia Kerova [Fair]

OOC: It's not as long as it seems. ;) Blame my history class.

IC: What am I doing here? Mia thought as she tirelessly plucked at the laced hem of her purple blouse and flattened out the gold rose design to the side, distracted from setting up her space in the ever magnificent Cascade Hall during her prep time. Her mind was racing with the tumult of the nostalgic wagon ride, and the names on the schedule of events, and whether or not to keep on the black, short sleeved cropped blazer. (Why did clothing matter when it was mostly shrouded in a robe!?) When she received the invitation to Sonora’s Midsummer fair, first she was ecstatic, then terrified, then homesick, then nervous. Lather, rinse, repeat. She was almost surprised that anyone there remembered she existed. And who was she to tell students about her achievements when her life had really only just begun. Twenty-one years old wasn’t enough time to brag.

You were a Prefect. And you got great grades. And you were a good friend to the people you met. So you had some keep-in-touch issues. Big deal! Give yourself some credit, girl! You know better.

She certainly did know now. She clutched the small diamond promise ring that once sat on her hand and now hung from a necklace chain—the actual promise now on her ring finger—and her mind strayed to the bouncing three and a half year old probably terrorizing a Prairie Elf somewhere with his giddiness and backpack of games. She missed having him in her lap already, but it was really for both of their peace of mind that he stay unseen. For now.

Mia put the finishing touches on her display for the students interested in her year and a half of charmed traveling. The floor became a colorful map of the world, just translucent enough to catch the reflective marble floor underneath. It had always been one of her favorite bits of magic at Sonora. The chairs were set up in a semi circle around the map. Behind Mia, a screen hung in mid air, and lining it were two columns of souvenirs. She walked the perimeter of the makeshift classroom to make sure everything was visible at all times.

All set.

Mia conjured a chair along the side that mimicked her favorite cushioned rocking chair at home. She pulled out a ball of yarn and two metal rods from her pack, and waited, rocking and knitting herself calm the muggle way. (That had become her lifeline in the first year with Leland. Idol hands and all that.) As a muggleborn witch, for years she tried to balance both worlds, academically and beyond, and finally she felt confident in her abilities to incorporate both worlds.

Her first scheduled hour came around, and the students interested trickled in. A fit of shyness came about all over again, making her wonder, as she had many times since drinking that bubbly potion, how she was sorted into Pecari. The feeling passed, and Mia smiled at the familiar and new faces with a wave. Her reasoning always led her to believe she was put in Pecari as a cap so the rest of her House didn’t explode with its own charisma.

Taking her wand from her ever conveniently charmed jean pocket, Mia stood and made her knitting vanish with the smallest pop! in the air. She greeted the students, her right hand twirling her wand behind her back like a baton.

“Hey,” she said with a genial smile. “I’m Mia Kerova, former Pecari Prefect. So, I take it you’re here because you’re kind of interested in charms, or you’re here to see my pretty face. Both are fine reasons.” She put her hands on her slight waist and brushed her brown highlighted waves over her shoulder. The she quickly dropped the persona. “Nah, I’m just kidding. But seriously, welcome, and hi again to some of you who might remember me from four years ago. Wow.” She paused for a moment.

“Anyway, I guess I should talk. Then the floor’s open to any questions. Um, when I was a student—” she paced along the map towards the North America design that flashed as her purple ballet flat touched it, “I didn’t do badly in my classes, but you know how you just have a niche? That thing you do really well, and despite what your parents might say, that’s what you want to involve your career and life around? Well, Charms was mine. If there was anything I was good at, it was picking up my wand and casting a spell to make something incredible happen exactly as I imagined it.

“So needless to say, the one thing I knew for sure as a student was that when I graduated, I wanted to be involved with spells and making things happen. How I was going to do that was a mystery—still kind of is—but I’m definitely on a nice road right now. After school—” Dates were entirely irrelevant, she concluded, “I enrolled in Princeton University in New Jersey with a nearly full scholarship, which I didn’t immediately know had a magic campus so research is important, and through there I was able to go on a Charms apprenticeship abroad. It was life changing. I thought you might like to see some answers I found to the ever elusive question, ‘Why do we need to learn this stuff?’”

Mia flicked her wand, and the screen hummed into life, projecting the first title: Charms in the Good Ol’ U.S of A! Beneath it were pictures of Mia and her classmates in lectures and workshops for her Beginning Charms Field Study class. Each had a caption naming the spell in colorful block letters and helpful arrows like the scrapbooks she loved and that earned her some extra money. In the center was her professor, Dr. Leonard Hadik, a handsome man for his years, renowned for his contributions to different magic research magazines. She pointed all of this out, and she noted her favorites of the pictures displayed. There were sophisticated charms for maintaining an ecosystem in an environment otherwise hostile—that should have sounded familiar—and charms like decorating for a special occasion with a bottled monsoon or the Aurora Borealis. She was happy to show any curious students the rest afterwards.

“So, early on,” Mia said, “Dr. Hadik taught me that there’s a place for everything, and everything in its place, and Charms has a place for everything and puts everything in its place. Meaning, through your day you can point out countless places where these spells have some affect on your lives as wizards and witches. They pop up everywhere. Then, when I went abroad—” A carefully doctored image appeared of her and Dino holding the portkey, the same broken beaded necklace in the column, in a wrapping. “—I was introduced to Charms of an entirely different sort that I never would have imagined or fully understood if I hadn’t experienced it for myself, and I want to share that with you as best as I can. So, welcome to Bali, Indonesia.”

The map peeled off of the floor into a spinning globe, and a sheet of light blue, mimicking rapid air travel, created a box around their space, unseen from the outside. When the globe slowed to a stop, the islands of Indonesia glittered in yellow, Bali, in particular, stood out. The map dripped down to carpet the floor again, and the blue became a scene as real as if they were all sitting in the small encompassment. The air warmed and went a little hazy with kicked up dust. The trees in the distance were thin, and natives walked by, going about their daily chores. Mia scuffed a little heart into the dust, smiling at her work. And none of it affected more than the students’ imaginations as they would soon realize the way Mia’s shoe was still spotless.

The screen and artifacts still hung behind her, and against the ground of the arena was the world map. The second artifact lowered into Mia’s hand. It was a mask with an open mouth expression, revealing the smooth row of teeth until two fangs jutted down. The eyes were wide on the reddened face, and atop its head was an ornate golden crown.

“With Dr. Hadik,” Mia said, standing on what appeared to be the bottom of an arena of benches, speaking over the now seemingly wider gap of a dusty performance space, “one thing I learned in particular was how cultural charms can be. Culture varies between states, countries, continents, and its constantly changing. Magic changes with it, and each place has different uses and styles for charms. This is a ritual performed in Bali. It’s the battle between Rangda, the evil witch, and the hero, the Barong.”

As she spoke, a figure entered from both ends of the arena, and Mia’s memory filled in more people in the seating. One performer wore the colorful mask of the witch, teeth long and curled, fingers doubled in length, wild straw colored hair to her feet, and in a costume of mostly red, black, and white stripes. The second player was actually a group of men filling the long, furry, heavily gold laden costume of the Barong. Its mask matched the one in Mia’s hands. As the two began their warrior dance to the beating of unseen drums, Mia continued.

“The story goes: if the Barong wins, the village is cleansed. If he loses, the men in the suit of the Barong go into a kind of trance and fall on their swords. Only the pure of heart won’t be impaled.” Rangda overwhelmed the Barong in battle, and, as Mia said, the men came out from the suit with blank faces, shaking. They upturned their swords and kneeled before them. Mia paused the ritual before any men fell forward.

“Whether you believe or not is your own choice. When wizards are involved, the charm on the swords decides their fate. It’s not a protection spell like Protego. It’s actually more of a—well, this will sound weird, but it’s like the charm that can waterproof your roof. It’s similar in that, for the ‘pure of heart’, this spell becomes a barrier, not as unforgiving as Protego, but more—intimate so to speak. When I saw it performed, those men really fell hard on their swords. Harder than you should with a spell like that, but they actually weren’t hurt. Pure of heart? Maybe. It was still awesome. Don’t ask me to explain when muggles do it.” She laughed.

“Anyway, before we move along, questions, anybody?”

0 Mia Kerova [Fair] Charms Around the World (Part 1 of 3) 0 Mia Kerova [Fair] 0 5

Mia Kerova [Fair]

July 31, 2010 12:10 PM

Charms Around the World (Part 2 of 3) by Mia Kerova [Fair]

“Okay, so the next place I want to show you is where I saw clearly how charms are connected to not just the secular, but to the religious. For that, we move over to Asia under the guidance of Dr. Wen Liu.”

Again, the map rose and spun for a few seconds, stopping with Asia facing full front, and China and Japan flashed in red and blue before the map sank to the now grassy floor. The “walls” dripped into a forest scene, and Mia seemed to pace across a clearing in a pine forest. On the screen was a picture of her and Dino with the portkey to China, a stained, childish cutout of a sleeping ghost. It was also the third artifact displayed.

“One of the Chinese religions we looked at was Taoism—spelled with a ‘T’; pronounced like a ‘D’—” It appeared on the screen, “and this involves a belief in ancestor worship, miracle making like soothsaying—Divination—and meditation to help communicate with spirits and nature and feel the rhythm of the world. I can tell you right now, I never felt calmer in all my life than in the months that I spent in China and Japan.”

Mia sat in the grass and crossed her legs, so glad she thought to wear her nice jeans instead of a skirt. It also brought back the normalcy of her petite stature. “We all know ghosts are here. It’s almost a second nature thing for us. But remember, different cultures handle different aspects of life in different ways. To the Taoists, these are beings to be revered, and the ghosts really appreciated it from what I saw.” A hazy figure of a passed warrior peeked through one of the pines around the group, just a memory of Mia’s, and it sat overhead and watched the lecture. “What I’m focusing on for you guys are some of the spells used when the wizards and witches are meditating.”

Mia summoned her pack from beside her rocking chair, and she pulled out a cage with a rubber ball in it. Thankfully, transfiguration was a close second favorite of hers. With a calculated twist and tap motion, a very active hamster scurried about the cage. Mia spoke the Chinese incantation for the demonstration’s purpose and a rosey spark of light zipped into the cage. The hamster stopped running in the wheel, and crawled out to sit right against the bars nearest Mia. If animals could smile, that hamster would.

“The spell is one similar to what some CATS and RATS takers probably know here in America. It’s a calming spell, but their purpose for it is much different than ours, and it’s a powerful one with some serious dangers if it isn’t cast properly. The same goes for the next spell, but it’s even more intense, and I don’t feel comfortable casting it on anyone or anything. I’ll just show you what I observed as I was taught about Zhan Buddhism, another religion in China, with an emphasis on a transcendental connection with meditation. It’s about rising above and beyond yourself—seeking Nirvana—and becoming one with the universe.”

On the screen, a few pictures were displayed similarly to the ones of her and her classmates, with captions for the incantation and the effect on those people. Mia sat beside Dr. Liu, a younger, but brilliant man, as a leader of that religious ceremony performed the spell that calmed everyone to a state where, as Mia recalled to the group, she forgot she was breathing. There was such calm bliss and she, herself, didn’t matter so much. It literally felt like taking a step out of her skin. The others who believed used it as a guide to their Nirvana. Mia used it as the greatest stress relief she could ever hope for. Just watching it again shifted her mood a bit.

The next stop was Japan, as the next image of Mia and Dino and their crushed origami portkey foretold. She reached across the grassy map and tapped Japan with her wand. The scene zipped along, out of the clearing of trees, across grassy plains, through busy, congested streets, over mountains, and across the sea until Mia and her students were in the audience of a playhouse. To the left was a long, raised walkway, and up front was a roofed, shrine-like stage that met the walkway. Just above the stage was Mia’s screen that used those blocky jittering letters to point out the different parts of the Noh stage, and the pictures around it showed Mia and her professor in the audience, serene faced as they had been under the meditative spell.

“In Japan, Noh theatre uses a similar charm on the actors, but with a twist. Rather than calming the actors, it helps create this transcendental feeling within the audience. I wish I had the three plus hours to show you a Noh play, which you’d love even if you don’t understand what they’re saying, but I don’t, so enjoy these pictures.” And beneath the pictures, the performers of Mia’s memory went through the nearly inconceivable motions of a Noh play, so subtle to the rhythmic chanting, you almost didn’t realize the performer had moved until he was half way across the stage.

“Sticking with Japan, though, I learned that in some cultures, the incantation of the charm isn’t the important part. There’s a phrase in Japanese that relates to all of their art forms.” Mia flicked her wand, and the symbols in Japanese, and the American spelling of the sounds beneath it, appeared in the center over a cartoonish figure of a Japanese archer. “Jo, potential energy,” he strung his bow and pulled it back, “Ha, released energy” the figure released the arrow and it zoomed towards the target beneath the last syllable, “Kyu, expended energy.” The arrow struck with a wooden thunk! and Mia smiled as the bowman bowed and strung his next arrow for as long as the projection stayed up. “There’s also Ma, a pause or stillness.”

“This idea of energy of movement goes for their spellwork too.” With another flick, Mia wished she had thought that aspect through because her wrist was getting tired, another figure appeared, copying Mia’s movements. “Your wand at the ready is the potential energy.” Mia held her wand forward. “Casting the spell is the released energy. Accio!” The spell shot at the artifact at the top of the second column beside the screen and drew to her the familiar crushed origami crane that she held forward. “Getting your result is expended energy.” She tapped the broken bird and it flew back to its place. “And Ma is the moment you take to stop. To think or concentrate. Isn’t it peaceful?”

“The next stop showing this idea of movement more than mouthing, is India.” The map pulled away from the ground and benches, and the globe spun, only to rest an inch or two westward. She hadn’t thought that one through well either. The scene changed to the front steps of the Taj Mahal. Of course she stopped at tourist spots, and she learned a thing or three that the muggle tourists missed out on. At the top of the screen was the image of her and Dino with the chipped gilded bangle portkey. Beneath it were images of an Indian dance, foreshadowing her next topic.

“In this culture, movement is even more emphasized,” she said, indicating the images of the dancers. “You can see how very stylized and specific these movements are. Just look at the hands. See how exact their movements are? It needs to be just that. The term is mudras. They’re codified hand gestures, extremely specific. Go ahead. Try them.” Mia changed the screen and a few rows of images appeared in slow motion, showing just how exact and seemingly unreal the gestures were. Fingers were bent every which way, and even the simple ones were a strain. She emphasized this by attempting some of the gestures herself, and failing miserably. She laughed. “See? It’s hard. In that culture, children are taught these gestures from a very young age, before tendons and muscle have a chance to get lazy. So if it’s that hard, just imagine how it is in their spells. Those were some of the most difficult spells for me to learn, and I didn’t end up getting most of them before I left. That’s for the very advanced in charms. There are charms to help loosen your muscles, but even after that, you have to get these precise movements down. So when you do get it right, it’s amazing.”

The next set of images showed Mia and Dr. Liu training, blocky text and all, and very few of the shots were of her failures. She picked the funnier of the catastrophes that left flowers sprouting out of control in the classroom and a pigmy elephant stampede. Dino wasn’t entirely pleased when she insisted on keeping one. Leland had fallen in love with it.

“Alright, final stretch. Any questions? Am I going too fast? Am I speaking in tongues?”

0 Mia Kerova [Fair] Charms Around the World (Part 2 of 3) 0 Mia Kerova [Fair] 0 5

Mia Kerova [Fair]

July 31, 2010 12:13 PM

Charms Around the World (Part 3 of 3) by Mia Kerova [Fair]

“Cool, so we’ve got—” Mia looked to her line of artifacts that had been guiding her lecture,”—two more stops. Okay, so, um, remember that analogy I made earlier about waterproofing your house? Well, there are Charms used in construction. See? You just can’t get away from them. It’s part of why they’re so great to study. There’s so much to learn and it’s all relevant.”

“The next place I want to show you is famous for its architecture. While I was there, we were looking into its history, and some incredibly elaborate designs came out of this place.” Mia summoned the next deactivated portkey a little slower, a dirty, patchwork cloth, and let it float down to the long tail of the European continent instead of placing it to see if she could hear any guesses before she said it aloud. When the material landed on Italy, the map lifted into the globe, spun over to southern Europe, and the walls flew them to the heart of the Roman Coliseum. The screen read in Italian, “Welcome to Italy!” right over the picture with the portkey as the other stops had in their respective languages.

“In Italy, while I was studying with Professor Giovanni De Clemente, one of the things we looked at was early structure design. When perspective was discovered in Italy in the Neoclassic Era, which is like, 1500s through 1700s, the performances they had for special occasions, Intermezzi, became ridiculously elaborate and beautiful.” Mia brought up images of these elaborate theatre sets and all of the drops, flats, and curtains involved, but marked them as simply as possible in her scrapbook text. She also took down her next souvenir—the small scale perspective design she created. It was a three sided wooden square only an inch thick, but when you looked through the front, it seemed to reveal a shoreline for miles. “Sorry that I keep jumping to performance. It was just really cool what I found out about those. And it connects to common construction too.

“Anyway, you can see how convoluted these structures are. If you’ve ever seen a play, scene changes are a breeze today. In neoclassical Italy, scene changes were ridiculous! Muggles figured out one way to make this happen. They used these pulleys and such. Wizards had the option to use spells to make things go. Charms could change the images on the flats, or make the scenery look like it’s moving, or whatever it wanted, but wizards felt the same need for huge spectacle. Again, it’s a cultural thing. So just like muggle inventions became bigger and bigger, so did the charms. These spells were getting more and more elaborate and more dangerous if something went wrong. But the effects were spectacular. These shows were a huge deal.”

Behind her, some animated scene changes took place side by side to show the muggle way—the tasking Chariot-and-pole method—and the magic way with ten tons of charms. Both left the little stick figures sweating. Some of the magical stick figures also had extra appendages from mistakes. So Mia had a little too much fun with her slideshow. Big deal.

“And the last thing,” Mia said, replacing the Italian artifacts, and stepping across the map on the ground again, “is really just for fun. You can count the practical uses for charms for forever and a day. It’s fun to see where people use charms for entertainment. It may have other uses, like in this case—well, let’s get there first.” Mia’s slippers had carried her back to Indonesia, but she also skimmed her wand over South East Asia. The globe reappeared and then lay flat with the indicated places lit up in white. The walls blacked out into a starry night on a grassy knoll.

“Welcome back to Indonesia and the Shadow Puppet theatre, also known as the Wayang Kulit.” Her screen showed pictures of the thin black puppets in use without the sheet blocking it so the students could see the details. Golden trims gave them designs according to their statuses. Different shapes of these mostly human-like puppets, whether they be round and squat, or svelte with wiry limbs, represented different characters of which there were five, as Mia and the screen explained. Refined nobles, aristocrats, warriors, ogres, and clowns.

“These performances have a dual purpose. They’re for the pleasure of the people, and the entire village will go to these performances. And they’re for the gods. What’s really cool about this is that there are close to a hundred puppets to use, about fifty per performance, the performances last for hours on end, well into the night and the next morning so the audience brings food and many always end up asleep, and for both muggles and wizards, there’s only one puppet master—or dalang to use the puppets and guide the gamelon orchestra behind him. He conducts them with his foot.” Mia pointed out the conducting baton between the toes of the dalang on the screen.

“What’s even cooler is that a wizard dalang may have the use of magic, but it’s still a lot of charms he has to control, and he still uses his foot!” Culture was a very powerful thing, and she hoped this was getting through to them since that was the focus on this round of field study.

Mia smiled at the images and then raised her wand. The map jumped up again, but instead of becoming a globe, it became a dummy that looked like the ceremonially garbed dalang in the images. She blanked the screen and moved it in front of the dummy. With another flick, her pack came over and she set it beside the dummy that began setting them up in rows like the dalang did, but with inhuman speed. Before long, a shadow puppet show was in progress. Mia took a few of the spare puppets and held them up beside the light of her wand, showing which went to which of the five categories. One of her personal favorites was the obese god that looked and acted funny, but if he was disrespected, he could make the character’s life a nightmare. Then she invited the students to hold and play with the puppets, showing them how to manipulate the dangling sticks, and then watch the puppet show up close or, as was customary—

“You can watch the dalang from behind the curtain too. It’s all a part of the show.”

Mia motioned to the other side of the screen where the dummy was busy telling a story through cut out and hinged puppets. She sat in her chair, and after letting them watch for a few minutes, she spoke for a brief interruption.

“So like I said, charms have a billion different uses, and the same use can be for a billion more reasons depending on where you are. As witches and wizards, you’re going to run into these charms anywhere you go. It’s just a fact of life. So it’s cool to be aware of what’s happening all around you and how it affects you. It didn’t seem that interesting at first, since on this trip I was mostly doing theoretical studies, but the professors I apprenticed under were incredible and so nice and so interesting. It was an amazing experience.”

“Questions? Comments? Missed anything? Want to know more about apprenticing? Want to plan a road trip with me?” She smiled at the group. Inwardly she breathed a sigh of relief. That was probably more than she had ever spoken in all her time at Sonora. Now she said what she wanted to say and the floor was open to questions.

Not bad, Mia.

0 Mia Kerova [Fair] Charms Around the World (Part 3 of 3) 0 Mia Kerova [Fair] 0 5

Morgaine Carey, Fair Presenter

July 31, 2010 7:28 PM

Healer Training by Morgaine Carey, Fair Presenter

For very nearly the first time in her life, Morgaine had found herself disturbed by the need to choose what robes she wanted to wear.

On one hand, in pureblood terms, she thought she was still supposed to be in mourning. Gwen being Gwen and thus not a respectable member of society, she most likely could have gotten away with three to six months, but she'd spent most of the not-quite-year since her sister's murder at the Academy in uniform robes and so, well, not in mourning. With many now thinking her father was physically dead as well, and with the family ambiguous on his status, she might be expected to make up for lost time on Gwen to sort of incorporate both of the family scandals. Plus, she still wore black when she did go out in public on non-official business, so it was expected of her.

On the other hand, she did not want people to remember she was Gwen's sister today. She really did not want people to think that she was the acting matriarch of the Savannah Careys today. For today, her life was simple. She was just a trainee Healer, better than most, if she did say so herself, but still just a trainee Healer. That was what Sonora had her listed as, and that was what she wanted to be; anyone who asked about her family would be, as politely as she could manage depending on the question, put off. Wearing the set of light blue uniform robes least recently bled on would help send that message.

Of course, the real reason she was here, selling it to her supervisor as a chance to recruit to get her out of assisting Larisett, was to make sure no one used the grand excuse provided by the fair to kidnap or kill her brother, and possibly to review the school security if she could get Sadi Powell to stand still long enough, but she couldn't think about that until she finished dealing with people. Until that point, she was a Healer. She'd gone with the uniform robes.

She focused on not scowling and managed to end up with a neutral expression. She had been gone for two years, and was surprised, looking back, to realize how much she’d changed, but imagined there were still many to whom Morgaine Carey was an unpleasant sort of legend, a legacy likely not made better by her subsequent rise, at nineteen, to the top of a family known for gleefully backstabbing its own at slight provocation. There was a good chance she'd be left alone, to keep an eye on the other Cascade Hall presenters and the staff.

Not that she thought she had much to fear from the other former students. Geoff Layne and his sister were not figures who struck fear in the hearts of men, and though Morgaine had been forced to sneak a look at the signs to remember her name, she remembered Mia Kerova, who'd become a Pecari prefect when Morgaine was in third year. Unlike Pseudo-Pierce, who did not seem to be here today any more than he seemed to be in existence these days, Mia Kerova was not a threat.

As for the other names she'd seen, well...Anne was not an influence she wanted on Edmond, but she was still on Morgaine's side, Saul was harmless enough, Catherine was both a ditz and a proper lady, as was Rosalind Rabindra, she doubted Earl Valentine had cared enough one way or the other about her sister to try to harm Gwen's brother, and so forth to the place where the biggest potential threat to Edmond was the one she'd known about before she came, and she couldn't see how physically harming Edmond would benefit Amelia Pierce at all.

The other part of her, the one that never had and still didn’t give two flips for family politics, looked around and wondered if any of the students here did feel the lure of her favorite subject and future profession, and why. Some of the youngest ones might be her trainees, if she was very good at what she did, and why other people were drawn to Healing had been a topic she speculated about a great deal lately. For her, it was power, and Merrill had told her privately that it was a challenging job that, once he was in, he would be secure in and always be able to look after himself whatever his father did while doing some good in the world, but there were those for whom just helping people seemed to be their entire reason for signing on instead of a consequence of a few months or years of working the wards as it had been for her. And then there were those who were only in it for the gold, but Morgaine hardly thought of them as Healers at all. They had the wrong mindset. Even she had known better than that even in the very beginning, and she’d been raised to be a misanthrope.

To her surprise, she did draw some attention, though there was no telling if it was because they were actually interested in Healing or if they were just fascinated by the little Carey girl-matriarch being here in the flesh. Hoping very much that it was the former, she began working through her prepared spiel. “Good morning, everyone,” she said briskly, as though talking to the first year trainees whose study group she had been roped into helping Trina and Merrill supervise. “I’m Morgaine Carey – “ she consciously did not introduce herself by branch; even before Father’s retirement, she had planned for Healer Carey and Morgaine Carey of the Savannah Careys to be different people – “a – Pecari who left here the year before last.” Better not to say ‘former Pecari;’ some people took great pride in Houses. Plus, it wouldn’t be so bad if she could show the younger Pecaris that their House designation did not necessarily mean that they had to be aimless in life. “Now, I’m a trainee Healer at the Raines Memorial Magical Hospital in Illinois, which is what I assume you’re all here to hear about. There are some pamphlets if any of you are interested.” She jerked her head toward the items in question, knowing some would merely be picked up because some people just could not resist free stuff, even if it was only a shiny bit of paper.

“Fawcett’s still here, isn’t he? I heard he’s a real professor now. He taught me in seventh year, and I thought he was a good, tough Potions teacher. My instructors at the Academy make what I did with him and Professor O’Leary, the old Defense teacher, look like firstie work – no offense to any first years. They pride themselves on trainees getting field experience almost as soon as we walk in the door. You don’t get to interact directly with patients for at least a few months, but you’re watching Healers and senior trainees work from the beginning, and being tested over what you see and how you react to it. If you’re very good, and you learn fast enough, then in your second year, you – like me – get to work the emergency entrance, and sometimes there might be one full Healer there to handle the worst cases. It’s…very...messy.”

She decided to show one tiny bit of charity and not tell them the part where, if an instructor took a special dislike to a student, they could push that student as hard as they liked and no one particularly cared. It was part of the system; those who didn’t break often made the best Healers, and since even the regular, no-one-knows-your-name approach was tough, the general philosophy seemed to be that if someone was going to crack, it was better that they did it as a trainee than as someone handling a couple of Aurors who’d been delivered in pieces and possibly with a trainee at their own heels. No one said this, of course, but it was how Morgaine saw things working. “In addition to this, you still have regular classes. The instructors are mostly still practicing Healers. Advanced, differential potions – Poisons and Antidotes in four-hour sittings on Fridays is the hardest, in my opinion, but none of them are easy. Herbology, so I’d advise anyone who’s serious about becoming a Healer to start an independent study as soon as possible. Transfiguration and untransfiguration. Defense Against the Dark Arts is a part of the diagnostics program, which also includes a number of Charms classes. And, of course, ethics and law courses to ensure that you don’t get sued, which can ruin your entire career, and that you use what you’re being taught properly, for the good of your patient. The sessions out with the patients and Healers are so you learn how and when to apply what you know; usually, you’ll be placed with Healers who’re willing to talk about it with you afterward.

“Most people who come don’t make it all the way through. It’s hard to really have any life outside of the work, especially when you can be assigned to any area at any time after the first two years.” Which was going to make her life extremely difficult next year; she knew Mercier would play merrily with her. “Of course,” she added, not breaking her deadpan, “I didn’t really have a life to begin with, so that wasn’t too much of a problem.” She thought she detected a laugh somewhere and half-smiled for a second. “But what we do – it’s important.” And now they were getting to the part where, no matter how she practiced, she ended up stiffening, with awkward pauses. She did not feel comfortable getting so close to touching on her own emotions. “You know you’re doing something important, and you’re – part of something that’s bigger than you. Most of us belong to things – the Society of Medical Magicians is one of the major ones, it incorporates medical potioneers and straight research and mediwitches and mediwizards as well, and specific academies often have their own things going. It’s a…brotherhood, I suppose.”

That part had not been in her script, and it made her uncomfortable. She sometimes thought of it that way, but it was like how she thought of her family: perfectly accurate to think, but too sentimental and dramatic to actually voice. “Anyway. Does anyone have a question? Comment?” Oh, yes. She was getting into dangerous emotional waters when opening herself up to public questioning seemed safer than talking about the Healer brotherhood.

0 Morgaine Carey, Fair Presenter Healer Training 0 Morgaine Carey, Fair Presenter 0 5

Geoffrey Layne, Fair

July 31, 2010 9:11 PM

The Further Study of Potions by Geoffrey Layne, Fair

As soon as Anne skipped out of the hall on her way to the library, totally ignoring the poor prefect apparently given the thankless task of looking after her, Geoff pinched the bridge of his nose hard and then rubbed his forehead. He'd known she was going to be...difficult - his entire reason for coming was to look after her - but now, he was just glad to have gotten rid of her before she started singing. No way the shrink had approved this visit to old stomping grounds, not if the shrink was worth the money Anne was paying her.

Until time to go, when he would have to ask whoever looked like her some very specific questions to make sure she had not kidnapped some poor kid and employed her own not-that-shabby potions skills to pull off a body switch, though, she was officially not his problem. That made him very happy. She had been getting more and more high-strung for days, unable to talk about anything but Sonora and Aladren and her favorite Quidditch games involving those two things and did he think the rest of their old teams would be there and so on until he had wondered if he'd agree to it if Chris asked for help murdering her just to shut her up. Waterfalls, like the ones he was hearing now, were a nice sound. Borderline-hysterical chatter was not.

Now that he had the liberty to do so, he went over to see who was going to be where, just out of curiosity, and after a single moment of shock, he had to bite off an oath. Not only had they put Anne in the same room with Zack Dill, but they'd put him with Helena and Morgaine. This was very likely to turn into a big game of show-up-the-other-kid.

And - yes. There was his sister. He hadn't seen her since the night she'd blown up at him after Anne's play, but it was her, all right. There had never been much mistaking them for anything but siblings. To judge by her pinched expression, Helena was no more pleased with the way the seating arrangements had fallen out than he was.

He hadn't even known she was going to be in the country.

All right. They could all be grown-ups here. Or he could, at least, be a grown-up here. After forcing himself to speak civilly to Dad, Lena would be no problem, even if she was mad instead of desperate to be forgiven. If they ran into each other, they ran into each other, and that was that. No need to make any grand dramatics about it.

Besides, she might not be mad anymore anyway. They might manage to patch things up. That would make putting up with Anne's histrionics more than worth it. He'd mostly pieced a family back together, now, but it wasn't the same without Helena. He missed her. Their parents and sister missed her - Lavinia, of course, didn't admit it, since apparently their last conversation had involved Helena point-blank refusing to support Vinny and her kids after Vin was of age, but he was relatively sure it was true, and their parents made no secret of it. Anne and Emily did not miss her, but neither would object to him classing her as family even if they didn't. She'd had two years, near enough, to calm down. Everything could work out all right.

The arrival of a few people, presumably other Potions geeks drawn to one of their own kind with fewer fangs and less range than Morgaine and her session on Healer training, put an end to his thoughts about family. Time to play to his audience. He had always been better with people in the abstract than up close.

“Hey, guys, what’s up?” he asked. Turning twenty – twenty-one in September – had not done much to alter his vocabulary or use of idiom when Helena wasn’t writing his speeches for him. “I’m Geoff Layne. Aladren. I was the Head Boy before last and – “ though he’d never been comfortable with the title – “Aladren Quidditch captain in my seventh year. Go Hawks. And these days, I’m studying Potions and Potions theory at UCLA.”

Never, in a million years, where he had expected to end up when he’d been a student here instead of a guest speaker, but so the dice fell. Other than being a semester behind where he should have been due to a slight case of mental shut-down, a semester he was working double time to make up for so he didn’t finish late, the west coast had been pretty good to him. On balance, though, he decided to avoid making much mention of his personal life in general and Calista specifically. It was hard to say that the relationship was an integral part of his life; while he was fond of her, they had long since settled on having a bit of fun and seeing how things went, and if she found herself another fling, he imagined he’d soon discover that there were, indeed, other hot chicks in the state of California.

“The ultimate plan is to master,” he informed them matter-of-factly. “Then I’ll have some options for what to do. There’s a lot you can do with a few Potions degrees – there’s places where it’s all you need to open an apothecary, for instance, and there’s usually teaching positions, even though I – “ he half-laughed – “don’t really see myself doing that. There’s also professional brewers, both commercial and medical, researchers, even some classes of writers.” Though he definitely couldn’t see himself doing that. His prose style was adequate for lab reports, but Anne and his occasional non-science professors agreed that he was not an amusing author. Only the specific kind of potioneer who leaned toward number-crunching and sought no entertainment from a read would find his articles appealing, and he wasn’t even a member of that subset himself.

Now for the presentation-y bit. “To get into potions, you mostly need three traits. They are patience, a good eye for detail, and creativity. The first two are obvious, but people forget about the last one a lot. It’s not just about being able to make a potion. If that was all you needed, then there would be first years we’d have to set up in degree programs, because they could follow a list well enough to make Veritaserum in their first week of school. It’s about being able to take what other people have discovered and make it better, or use it as the basis for figuring out a better way to do things altogether. Herbology’s a useful minor, or even a double major if you can swing it.” Good advice, for all he wasn’t officially taking it. Ah, well.

He wondered how many times, given his decision to include about ten to fifteen students per group and the number of students in the school, he would have to go back through this. Leaving early wasn’t really an option, not with Anne here. It felt ridiculous, but he really didn’t feel that he could trust her to leave on her own. “Any questions?”

16 Geoffrey Layne, Fair The Further Study of Potions 72 Geoffrey Layne, Fair 0 5

Blake Taylor

August 01, 2010 2:33 PM

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...me! by Blake Taylor

Ah, Sonora. Blake’s childhood into manhood (actually, his dad told him that he still wasn’t a man, but that was besides the point.) The brunette Transfiguration Professor of SUM was pleased when his little cousin Demelza wrote to him about Sonora’s Alumni Midsummer Fair. Blake and Demelza weren’t always on the best terms (Demelza was young and far too hyper for him) but she was his cousin, plus her and his little brother Paul were playmates, or whatever it was called at their age. He immediately volunteered to support a presentation in the Cascade Hall (good and bad memories from there) about his job as a transfiguration professor. Planning the presentation was like planning a lesson, Blake didn’t find to too hard. He just had to remind himself that he was going to be talking to little kids, and that he couldn’t throw a brick if he got angry. It would probably scare the poor lads. So, Blake would have to keep his temper, despite how hard it was for a bipolar person.

He was shocked by his recollection of just the smell of his old school when he entered it. It was at that moment that he realized that he was kind of old. Some people didn’t consider 27 years of age as old, but that was just 3 years away from 30, and 30 was like a mid-life crisis to Blake Taylor. Just give him another 23 more years and he would be antique!

Blake was only planning on doing a morning presentation of the sort of work he did, plus a surprise. A nice little surprise that only young kids like ones at Sonora would appreciate. As he set up for his presentation, he thought over again about what he was supposed to do. He hoped that he could get the kid’s attention (hopefully all the Pecari students didn’t have ADD like Demelza) by starting off with showing them his cool animagus powers. Then, he would just go from there.

His presentation table was pretty neat, he thought. He had a big sign hanging over it that had letters that flashes into all the colors of the rainbow (ok, so he was getting into charms there) and a background that simultaneously showed a quill that changed into a watch and other things of that theme. He was rather impressed by his work. On it, it read”

Transfiguration Presentation, By Professor Blake Taylor

“Hey kiddos!” He said to the kids who had come to listen to him. The youngest Taylor was pleased that at least some kids wanted to listen to him! “I’m Blake Taylor, head of Sapienti University of Magic’s Transfiguration Department. Some of you, one day, may want to continue your education there in hopes of becoming, oh, maybe a Professor one day, like myself!” He smiled at them. He never smiled that much at his students. What were these kids doing to him?!

“We professors are cool. Way cooler than you’d think! Wanna know why?” Woah, he was being way more enthusiastic than ever! At that moment, he changed into his African tiger form. Yeah, he was put in jail for illegally becoming an animagus, but he didn’t have to tell them that! He RAWRED very loudly, expecting some of the students to be rather impressed. Then, he changed back into his human form.

“And, that’s not the only benefit to being an animagus! Imagine the things you could do if you were something like a bug! You could do some awesome spying, right? Or, someone could spy on you. Transfiguration is a very important subject, and teaching, I must say, is quite a thrill as well. And being a professor is quite awesome, too!” Blake sincerely meant all that he was saying.

“You get to teach,” or, in his case, torture, “students your own lessons, and you see them learn! Don’t you get that satisfaction when you help out a fellow classmate when you help them with their homework?

“Ok, so any questions about life as a professor, or maybe what I teach, or well, you can ask anything, I guess!” He smiled at them, and waited for their questions.

“Oh, wait, of course, how could I have forgotten?! I have something for each of you,” he dug into his bag and pulled out an action figure of an evil wizard with a black hood and everything, and one exactly the same with the exception o more feminine features. Kids loved these, right? “This is an action figure of a dark wizard. And this is one of a witch. When you tap your wand on it, it transforms into a good wizard,” Blake tapped his own wand on it, and the cloak turned pure white, and the wizard smiled. “One day, if you guys really like transfiguration like I do, you can learn how to do the spell to make this work. For now, enjoy!” He hoped that none of the SUM students who were also there saw him being so… nice. It was terrifying.

“Also, on this table are many objects that you can tap your wand on, and see what happens!

“Now, if you have any questions, ask away!”

OOC: you can be creative about what is on the table, and what it turns into! :)

0 Blake Taylor It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...me! 0 Blake Taylor 0 5

Helena Layne

August 02, 2010 8:15 PM

Desk Jobs on the World Stage by Helena Layne

She was an idiot. A complete, bona fide, no-doubt-about-it idiot.

The soft noise of the waterfalls seemed almost obscenely loud as Helena rubbed her temples against a post-Portkey headache not helped by having her brother, who she could tell was occasionally glancing in her direction even if she was pointedly ignoring him, in the room with her and having sighted at least one other person she really didn’t want to see and another she was uncertain about. And she had just been here last year, and captain of the Quidditch team then, so at least almost everyone in Crotalus would still be inclined to see her as ‘one of them’ instead of a supposedly wise adult. Which, considering how her career was going in the wake of a seriously failed attempt at getting some self-esteem and maybe a promotion, she wasn’t anyway. She suspected half the reason she’d been given the days off to come and do this thing was so they could discuss transferring her to some godforsaken corner of Canada with less risk of her finding out about it and screwing something else up by attempting a counter-play.

What had she been thinking, coming back? She had come up with some rubbish about showing the people in her House that there were options in the world beyond being pretty and sitting on a vast estate, but it was seeming thinner by the second.

She had been happier at Sonora than at home for most of her seven-year tenure, it was true, but she had also said she was going to make a clean break. Be done with her family. Get so far away from them that she had to use her mother’s name, rather than her father’s, just to get a flicker of recognition from anyone other than the handful of relatives she had on the other side of the Pond. She was going to be her own person and not get sucked into the drama, and yet, here she was, fresh off pulling a “Mark Layne” of her very own and denying, with increasingly little success, that she’d come at least a little to remember when people had thought well of her and because she knew her brother, the Head Boy, was bound to come.

She had forgotten that there was no way Anne would pass up the chance to come home, which was likely as large a part of why Geoff was here as his feeling of obligation over being a former Head Boy, and just how poor the terms she and he had last parted on had been. She seemed to remember calling him pathetic to his face, and possibly accusing him of being something similar to the same kind of coward as their father, who being angry at was their sole point of unity at the time. Even if Anne didn’t eviscerate her for that – and there was no denying that Anne was family, too, even if it was warped by Geoff wanting to marry her and her being that one relative Helena really felt she could, indeed, live without – she could see why Geoff himself might very well still feel more inclined to punch her than make polite conversation over corn dogs.

Still, here she was, and unless someone happened to have a very exact kind of connection to British international politics, the Russian embassy in London, and an apparently fairly well off but largely inconsequential guy from Scotland, nobody here would know that her daddy issues had finally boiled over in an epic attempt to show the old man up that had backfired. If she could just remember not to be too cynical, as she’d too often let herself forget in the past year, then she could go back to being sweet, efficient Helena the Crotalus Quidditch captain, better known for shadowing the Two Geoffries than for anything she had really done herself. It hadn’t been a bad life, when she forgot about the daddy issues that had gotten her into this, and she had made a conscious effort to focus on her life here whenever possible. The RATS she’d needed to get away had not come for begging. She could impress that on the students if she could do nothing else.

That was the ticket. Three presentations, at ten, twelve, and two, with times when the students could ask questions about whatever and casually talk to her afterward. A bit of wandering between times, to hopefully covertly check to see how well her classmates were doing compared to her. And then there would be the evening part of it, which would almost certainly involve some level of interaction with the Geoffrey she was sure she didn’t want to see and probably with the one she was ambivalent about, but her Portkey wasn’t scheduled until noon tomorrow and she wasn’t running from something without a really good excuse, and deciding if she was going to get up at the crack of dawn to have breakfast with her parents before hopefully not having the problem again for another year or two was not good enough.

After the Hall had cleared enough that she could be fairly sure the people in front of her wanted to talk to her, she straightened up her spine a hair and smiled brightly. “Hi,” she said, noticing, absently, that her accent had drifted to the degree that those who’d known her might do a bit of a double take. “As I’m, sure some of you remember from last year, I’m Helena Layne. I was Quidditch Captain for Crotalus in my sixth and seventh years, Assistant Captain before that, and I participated in Crotalus’ contribution to the last Concert as our former Quidditch Coach, Amelia Fox.” At the time, that had seemed insanely risky; now, the memories made her smile. That had been one of the most straightforward, unplanned, no-agenda fun things she’d done in her life. “After graduating, I left home to work in my mother’s native country, which is how I came to be here and talking about my experiences at the British Ministry of Magic’s Department of International Magical Cooperation.”

She had conjured up some visual aids, which she projected into the air at this point, at least a little to keep the focus from being on her face for every second of the time. She wasn’t yet that comfortable with the spotlight. Most of them were stock images of tourist attractions from around the world, with a Ministry seal in the center to show how this was all connected. They weren’t much, but they would keep some attention. “So. College isn’t a requirement, as it usually is here, so I was able to start work almost immediately after school. Almost because there were some paperwork snafus, but my great-grandmother got most of those straightened out.” She had, to her mild surprise, gotten used to being related to moderately prosperous people instead of complete non-entities, and to a little name-dropping. “Start at the very bottom of the ladder. There’s always going to be some people who have the right connections, or who are just that good, who fly to the top, but really, most of us start there and have to work our way up. It’s better to be patient, make friends with your coworkers, flatter your boss, and advance a little at a time. Lots of people try to move too fast and end up getting in over their heads.”

Well, she had done all right at making her coworkers like her, at least. And even an adequate job of flatting her boss. If not for that moron Duncan, she could have been all right. “I really do think that making friends with anyone you can is the key. It’s connections that get you somewhere. Never make anyone angry with you if you can help it.”

Good, good advice. “But anyway.” Good Merlin, she was already falling back into her old speech patterns. “You’ll most likely spend your first year at a desk. Probably your second, too. If you’re very good, then within a few years, you can staff for one of the ambassadors and get to travel a bit, though you might stay in one place that isn’t home for a long period of time.” Not a concern for her, not when she didn’t have anything she’d call a home. “Those with multiple languages are at an advantage, for obvious reasons, especially those who know non-human languages. Mermish and Gobbledegook are in especially high demand.

“Eventually, you can travel a substantial portion of the world, though long-term posts and ones where you make many public appearances usually tend to be things where it’s believed you have a good enough knowledge of the culture and personality to keep from offending anyone. It’s quite possible to retire from a desk job, if you aren’t good enough to do anything larger-scale. It’s really a matter of what your talents and traits best suit you to do to benefit the group and the government in general on the international stage.”

She stepped forward slightly, folding her hands, which she’d been gesturing with as she talked, primly at her waist. “I’ll take any questions you have now.”

16 Helena Layne Desk Jobs on the World Stage 88 Helena Layne 0 5

Oliver Abbott

August 05, 2010 4:43 AM

Academia vs Apprenticeship by Oliver Abbott

The fair wasn't entirely tailored to meet Oliver's needs, but he'd decided to get the best out of it he could. He happened to be in the incredible position of being the nephew of one of the current top names in potions research. Oliver had only really got to know Uncle Ray since he'd been at Sonora, but their acquaintanceship had developed increasingly over that period; Oliver had spent his entire midterm staying with his uncle. In fact, it had been during that time that Oliver had professed his own desire to continue with that sepcific subject. He'd always been good at brewing, and he'd obtained an Oustanding on his CATS - he had no reason to suspect his RATS grade would be any different. Oliver liked to think it was his grades and other relevant qualities, rather than just his relationship to his uncle that had landed him an exclusive apprenticeship working with Uncle Ray and a colleague for the next three years of his life. It wasn't an opportunity that Oliver was in a position to turn down, so any thoughts of college had been immediately neglected. He wouldn't earn much, but he'd be able to live with his Uncle so what little he did earn would be fine. Maybe he'd even have time to join a minor league Quidditch team after his first few months of getting used to the workload.

With his future so beautifully laid out before him, Oliver didn't need to talk to alumni about their experiences - he checked the schedule anyway, and as he'd expected, nobody had come back to talk about a potions apprenticeship. It wouldn't matter anyway - whatever they said it wouldn't sway Oliver's decision. However, Geoff Layne had returned to talk on further study of potions, so the seventh year thought he may as well head over and see what was being said.

Oliver was pleasantly surprised to discover that while Layne did drop in a quick promotion of the Aladren Quidditch team, he didn't waste anyone's time in describing what had been on his syllabus, nor the struggles he'd had in getting to grips with the work. Actually Oliver probably got almost as much use from the short spiel as any of the other students who'd gathered. As Layne talked, Oliver did begin to wonder about the merit of his own career path versus the one being presented - would it be more beneficial, he wondered, to have academic qualifications, or would the vocoational experience be more vaulauble. As Layne had asked for questions, Oliver saw no reason not to volunteer his.

"I'm doing a potions apprenticeship," he began, omitting the details of by whom he would be instructed, "and I know it would depend on the specific career path, but generally speaking, what's your opinion on the necessity of academic qualifications?" Oliver knew the opinion of the various College pamphlets he'd seen in the Commons, but he was asking Layne was his own opinion was, as someone who was in the position for himself.

0 Oliver Abbott Academia vs Apprenticeship 99 Oliver Abbott 0 5

Geoff L.

August 08, 2010 6:43 PM

Whatever floats your boat. by Geoff L.

He was too young for them to have, as far as Geoff could remember, shared many classes, but the name Abbott came to mind easily enough once its owner began to speak. For one thing, there weren't many albinos at Sonora, and for another, the kid had been Helena's Assistant Captain. And a damn good Chaser, if he remembered right, though the truth was that Geoff had never been nearly invested enough in any of the Quidditch teams to still recall their ranks with perfect clarity. It had, to him, been a hobby, one that he had now largely given up in favor of more interesting and less time-consuming sub-hobbies.

Geoff nodded when Oliver finished his question. "Interesting question," he said, giving himself a moment to think. His sister would have scoffed at such a very elementary tactic, but there was a reason he'd given up any thought of going into politics as soon as he'd begun thinking at all again after his break-up with his parents. It felt arrogant to think of himself as honest, so he thought of it as preferring to be straightforward instead, not walking on tiptoe around every possible issue. "I'd say it's mostly a matter of what you want."

He decided to elaborate a little. "Take me, for instance - Haven't decided exactly yet, I'll admit it. So the academic side could help get me into areas that are less directly potions-based, or that deal with the connections between Potions and, you know, other branches of magic." An interesting field of study, though he feared his brain did not work quite the right way for it; he had helped Anne with a comparatively basic-level paper on the topic, once, and had ended up frustrated and with what felt like a migraine. "You want to work in brewing, or in straight potions research, then apprenticeships can be just as good, or better if you're into close specialization. I'm hoping to work with a master for a while after I finish my degree, actually, just to have the full experience. Anything else on that?"

16 Geoff L. Whatever floats your boat. 72 Geoff L. 0 5

Headmistress Powell

Midsummer Fair Part I by Headmistress Powell

Mia Kerova [Fair]

Charms Around the World (Part 1 of 3) by Mia Kerova [Fair]

Mia Kerova [Fair]

Charms Around the World (Part 2 of 3) by Mia Kerova [Fair]

Mia Kerova [Fair]

Charms Around the World (Part 3 of 3) by Mia Kerova [Fair]

Morgaine Carey, Fair Presenter

Healer Training by Morgaine Carey, Fair Presenter

Geoffrey Layne, Fair

The Further Study of Potions by Geoffrey Layne, Fair

Blake Taylor

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...<i>me!</i> by Blake Taylor

Helena Layne

Desk Jobs on the World Stage by Helena Layne

Helena

Questions (Third Session) (nm) by Helena

Helena

Questions (Second Session) (nm) by Helena

Helena

Questions (First Session) (nm) by Helena

Oliver Abbott

Academia vs Apprenticeship by Oliver Abbott

Geoff L.

Whatever floats your boat. by Geoff L.