Professor Kijewski

December 05, 2006 6:24 PM
Kiva had had a very amusing and somewhat awkward start of the day. But it was definitely a break in her usual routine that Kiva had apparently needed. With life back at her parent's house getting steadily worse, any break from reality was a nice one to have for Kiva. After her seemingly random conversation with Simon, Kiva went back to setting up her class materials before eventually waiting for her class to arrive. As usual, it didn't take long for her to hear the little padded feet of her first and second years.

There were times (pretty much since the disaster of her first year teaching here at Sonora) when Kiva wondered whether or not it was a good idea to teach her class outside. But, after awhile, she realized that this was the only class, aside from flying, where the students were allowed outside for a breath of fresh air and the freedom to move around. Plus, with some of the things she would be teaching the older students, Kiva would need the space.

When the last of the students arrived and settled in, Kiva began her lesson. “Good morning, Everyone!” Kiva greeted them with a smile. “Welcome to Care of Magical Creatures. For those of you who don’t know me, I am Professor Kijewski. However, most people just call me Professor K.” Kiva introduced herself. The crate directly behind her made a soft whining sound, but Kiva ignored it. “This class is less formal than your other classes. The only rule I have is to not talk while I or one of your peers are talking. Other than that, feel free to get as comfortable as you’d like. Go ahead and remove your robes if you'd like, I know it's hot out and I want you all to be as comfortable as possible." Kiva said as she paced infront of her students. She waited a moment just incase there were a few students who decided to take her words literally and get comfortable.

She went behind her and opened the container, pulling something out before replacing the lid. She held up the custard-colored fur spherical shaped animal in her hands and showed it to the class, "Today we will be discussing these. This is called a puffskein." Kiva said raising her arm a bit higher for everyone could see it. "These are scavengers and very easy to care for. They usually make the best sort of pets for beginners or when parents feel that the responsibillities of any other pet may be too great." Kiva paused here to make sure everyone was paying attention to her.

"What's really cool about these creatures is that they don't mind being roughly handled. You can toss them, squeeze them, do whatever you like and you'll usually get a happy purring response from them." Kiva tossed the puffskein in her hand high into the air, caught it and gave it a squeeze. The result was a loud purring sound, much like the sound one would get from a content cat. "What I have in this pin are a bunch of puffskeins. I thought that since this is our first lesson, we might as well make it as fun as possible. If everyone could just stand up and grab one puffskein, you may take the rest of class and play with them or toss them between one another." Kiva said, opening the container and moving so that the students would have better access at getting to the puffskein.

"There are plenty for everyone and you all have to participate, remember you are earning your house points here." Kiva called out to everyone. In the past, she had always had a student or two who would do nothing during the lesson. After the blowout last year, Kiva was going to nip that habit in the butt as early as possible. "If everyone enjoys their puffskein, I'll consider having you all take care of them and name them. These are babies, and because there are an abundance of these creatures in the shops, most never find a home. So, whether or not you guys can keep them as house pets or class pets, it's entirely up to you." Kiva said, smiling at her students. She was hoping that the idea of being able to call one their own was enough to really inspire them. Though, she knew there would always be a handful that would want nothing to do with the creatures. Such a shame too, considering how easy they were to care for.

OOC: Okay everyone, I'm looking for how well you write your reponses (make sure they are at least 2 paragraphs, 5 sentences each), grammar, and how well you develop your character. Take your time and have fun! Also, because this was an issue in the past, I will write a post indicating that this lesson is completed and everyone is dismissed. Until that post is written, continue to post here. Thank you!\n\n
Subthreads:
0 Professor Kijewski Years 1 and 2, Lesson 1 0 Professor Kijewski 1 5


Meredith Lail

December 09, 2006 10:19 AM
Meredith had done her regular morning stretches after waking up that morning. She got dressed and went to breakfast, her hair in the typical stubby ponytail. Her light blonde hair had grown over the summer, but she made sure to cut it before coming back to school. When she went back to get her bag and whatever she needed for classes that day she saw Saul gathering some first years for his tour group. Meredith couldn’t help but feel slightly empowered by being a second year. Okay, she wasn’t exactly upperclassmen level, but she wasn’t the new kid being stared at anymore. She may still get some stares, but that had nothing to do with her age. That was her personality.

When she got outside where the Care of Magical Creatures class was being held with the first years, Meredith dropped her bag and sat on the ground in a way she fell into over the summer. It was a flat way of sitting on her knees so that all of the side of her leg was touching the ground, rather than just the tops of her knees and shins. She stopped noticing when she did it except when her mother would tell her to stop because apparently it was bad for her knees. Meredith took off her school robe since it was far too beautiful a day to wear the dark heavy thing. She threw it on top of her bag and looked back at Professor K as she started the lesson.

Meredith’s attention was half drawn from the teacher to the crate behind her. Something was making noise in there and Meredith wanted to know what. But she had to sit through introductions and all that. Luckily it didn’t take long to get to the lesson. Professor K pulled out a little yellowish ball of fuzz from the crate. They would be learning about fuzz? Oh! They were puffskeins. If Meredith had spent any time inside her house she might’ve seen a book or two on magical creatures in the library and recognized the little puff critter. She listened and watched Professor K explain about the puffskeins.

The teacher let the students take one of the many baby puffskeins and Meredith was happy to oblige. She got up quickly and made her way to the crate, managing to grab one of the little things. She was about to worry that the things would be crushed under the tons of hands, but she remembered Professor K said they didn’t mind being handled roughly. Meredith backed up and sat back down when she got hers and looked at the ball of fluff in her hand.

“You're kinda cute. I ought to name you little guy.” She said to the puffskein and tossed it in the air. She clapped her hands once and caught it. It purred loudly and happily. She grinned. This was her kind of creature. Of course she loved Pence, but he didn’t like all the rough stuff. He absolutely hated the wagon ride, but this little guy would love it. She hoped Professor K was serious about letting the students keep them. She tossed it up again and clapped twice. She squeezed it and it purred again. “So what should I name you, huh?” She let it in the air a third time, clapped three times and it landed right in her hands.

“What about,” It went up again, but a little too far backwards. Meredith leaned back to catch it and managed to fall over on her back. She opened her eyes after the thud and saw the seemingly upside down student directly behind her. Her head was only inches from the other student. Meredith grinned and caught the puffskein as it came towards her face. It purred in her palms.

“Oops. Went too far again.” She laughed. “Hey there. Did you name your critter yet?” \n\n
0 Meredith Lail Little guy needs a name... 0 Meredith Lail 0 5


Helena Layne

December 09, 2006 6:27 PM
It wasn't as hot outside as it could get during the summer back home, but Helena was still uncomfortably warm by the time she got to the Care of Magical Creatures area. Sitting down cross-legged on the ground, she twisted her hair up and off her neck one-handed for a moment before letting it fall again. At home, she stayed mostly indoors where the cooling charms worked, and sharing with Lavinia compelled her to keep her room rigidly neat. Here, with the dorm to herself, she had become just enough of a slob that there wasn't enough time to locate a hairclip when she overslept.

It was strange to see the first years and know that they were first years, but also a relief. She had never been the "baby" in her life until the previous year, and the weirdness of it had never completely worn off. In six years, she would be the eldest, which would probably feel even less natural. She had technically been the youngest child for two years, before Lavinia was born, but Geoff had been securely in place as the eldest child and grandchild well before her parents even thought about having her. Shrugging it off, Helena focused on professor Kijewski. Things were back to normal for the moment, and that would do.

She left her robes on despite the heat and Kijewski's permission for the class to discard them. She'd never held with all that nonsense about wizarding dress setting them apart or whatever - at home, she was out of robes a lot more often than she was in them - but they were the school uniform, and it would feel like breaking the dress code. A minor rule, but it was usually pretty obvious when someone broke it. She didn't want to deal with the feeling of being stared at. Shifting her position on the ground, she leaned forward to look at what the professor was holding up and clapped her hands in delight before she realized it.

She had heard of puffskeins, but she'd never seen one or held one. Her family had Pandora for the mail, but other pets had always been deemed impractical; Lavinia was the only member of the family who couldn't remember the fits she'd pitched during her crup and cat stages, but none of it had gotten her what she wanted. When they were told to come get one to play with, Helena was clamoring towards the front right along with everyone else and soon came up with one of the tiny spheres in her right hand. It was humming contentedly from her hand tightening to lift it out.

She carried it back to where she had been sitting, bouncing it very slightly in her hands. Professor Kijewski had said that it wouldn't mind rough handling, but she didn't have it in her to toss the puffskein about like a rubber ball. Instead, smiling so broadly she thought her face might crack, she began petting it, laughing as she dodged its attempt to put its tongue up her nose. It wasn't a good idea to get attached, since the professor surely wasn't serious about letting them keep the creatures, but it was hard not to want to keep it.

She was giving the puffskein another small toss when a thud jerked her head around to look at the girl who had just landed hard on her back in front of her. One of the Pecaris in her year, she thought, the only House to have its members of her year in a close group that she had seen. She smiled at the other girl as she caught her own puffskein as it came down. "I was thinking of Sunny," she said, rubbing her hand in a circle on what she thought would have been the puffskein's back. "I'm not too good with making up names. You?" She would have asked if the other girl - she thought her name was Meredith - was all right, but it seemed unlikely that she would be laughing if she was hurt.
\n\n
16 Helena Layne Had any ideas? 88 Helena Layne 0 5


Meredith

December 10, 2006 2:38 PM
Meredith flipped herself onto her stomach, brushing grass from her hair, when the other girl spoke. She was trying to put a name to the face. She had seen her in classes, probably in Cascade Hall a few times, but had never actually sat and spoke to her. She wondered why since the girl seemed nice. She mentally shrugged, and looked at the puffskein in her hands. There were a million possibilities to name it. Thinking of a name wasn’t the problem. It was choosing one that was her issue. She had the same trouble when she named TinTin. She picked the name when he started tearing apart the tinfoil her mother was using to keep a roast warm.

“Sunny is a perfectly fine name for it. I like it. I haven’t got a name for mine just yet.” Meredith squeezed the little thing again and listened to its happy purring. “How about—no…maybe—nah. Oh! What about Dot? Yeah, I like Dot. It’s just a little dot of yellow. What do you think about that, Dot?” Meredith pushed herself up into her odd sitting position. She tossed Dot in the air and clapped five times, catching it again. Its happy sounds were loud. “I’ll take that as a yes.” Meredith gave Dot a rest from tossing and just pet it, not really able to tell what she was petting, but she assumed it was either its stomach or back.

“Pence is going to love this little guy.” She told the girl, a name sort of connected, but still seemed a little off for some reason. Probably because it was. “Pence is my mouse. He’ll probably mistake Dot for a pillow and fall asleep on it. Do you have any other pets? Oh, I’m Meredith, by the way. You’re Helen, right?” She asked sounding the name out slowly. She crossed her fingers jokingly, as if praying she got the name right. She didn’t want any hard feelings, but she couldn’t really be blamed for not knowing. They had never really met before. Plus, she was pretty sure she was at least close with the name.\n\n
0 Meredith Tons, but it's hard to pick one 0 Meredith 0 5


Helena

December 11, 2006 10:30 PM
Helena chuckled at the reasoning behind the other girl's puffskein's name. "I get it," she said, starting to toss Sunny gently from hand to hand. "It's a good name. I picked mine mostly because it can work as Sunny for a female or Sonny for a male." The only Sonny Helena had ever heard of was a character on her mother's favorite WWN soap, but most of the characters on it had normal names, a sharp contrast to the abnormal drama of their "lives". Helena had started following one of Sonny's story arcs over the summer, but had given up on it in the more immediate drama of Geoff's adventures in romance.

She listened to Meredith talk about her mouse, then shrugged when asked about other pets. "My parents got us an owl for the mail when I was about seven. My brother Geoffrey was on a Greek kick when we got her, so the poor thing wound up named Pandora." Helena suspected their father's snotty former boss of the same name had also had her part in Geoff's executive decision, but it didn't really matter. Pandora Phillips had moved on to her next post nearly six months before they got the owl. "Unless we get to keep these, though, Panny's all I've got."

Helena laughed good-naturedly at the way her name was sounded out. "Not bad, for a first guess," she joked, reverting to stroking Sunny. "I'm Helena." She gave Meredith a slightly crooked grin. "You can call me Helen if you want to, though. It's a change from Lena and Lenny." She had never understood how people got Lenny from Helena, which had more of a 'lee' sound in the middle. Her namesake Grandmother Corin had the 'len-ah' sound to her name, but she was British, not South Carolinian. She still answered to it, though, because it was more curiosity than annoyance and people would think she was crazy if she started going off about being Hel-lee-na instead of Hel-len-ah. \n\n
16 Helena I just picked the first one that sprang to mind. 88 Helena 0 5


Meredith

December 13, 2006 7:05 PM
Meredith smiled at the approval for Dot’s name and Helena told her why she picked Sunny. It made sense.

“Yeah, I don’t know how to tell if these little guys are actually little guys or not.” She looked at Dot in wonder, but let it alone for the time being. “We can ask Professor K. She’s got to know. It’s her job, right?” If Dot was a girl, it would be the first girl pet she’d own. Pence and TinTin were both boys.

Then Helena explained about her owl, Pandora, or Panny to her. Meredith didn’t think Pandora was that terrible a name, but the owl was her only pet? That was sad. "I think we will get to keep them. Professor K said there were like, a million of them." So she wasn't quoting word for word, but that was the general feeling she got. Meredith had wanted more pets, but her mother would only allow so many “vermin” in the house at one time. That was just the kind of high-class woman she was.

When Meredith was allowed to pick her own pet and brought home Pence, her mother nearly had a heart attack. It was actually very funny. It was almost a wonder why her father’s family didn’t like her, but no matter how sophisticated she could be, there was nothing more important than blood to them. But that was basically the extent of Meredith’s knowledge on them. Blood was all that mattered and not to be like that because that wasn’t what was important. Period. The end. And Meredith rarely questioned further seeing how upset her father could get over it.

“I’ve had Pence for,” Meredith counted off on her fingers as she thought “almost three years. TinTin, my owl, we’ve had for six years. He’s more of a family owl then just my owl, but I take care of him the most when I’m home. Mama won’t get near him. She’s got a small fear of birds that the twins like to make fun of her for. I think she’d like Dot though. Yellow’s her favorite color anyhow.”

Helena told Meredith she was close with the name. She knew she wasn’t that far off.

“Oh, Helena. I knew I was close.” Meredith laughed. “If you want I’ll call you Helen. My friends usually call me Mere, though some have taken to Merry. I don’t like it as much, but it’s not the end of the world if I’m called that.” Meredith glanced Elly’s way with a small smile. She was standing and then sat down, but then Meredith couldn’t see her anymore past the boy next to her. She looked back at Helena. Before she could say anything more, she heard a shout that sounded suspiciously like Caedence. Something about being called ‘Hun.’ Meredith shook her head with a grin as she sighed.

“That girl always seems to be mad about something.” Meredith said offhandedly with a look towards her roommate. She also seemed to be trying to act nicer and Meredith gave her kudos for that. She had nothing at all against Caedence. She just always got the feeling that Caedence might actually try to bite her head off if she said just one wrong word. She wasn’t scared of the girl any, just wary of her head.\n\n
0 Meredith And it worked just fine. 0 Meredith 0 5


Helena

December 19, 2006 10:08 PM
"I guess so," Helena said, studying her own Sunny and Meredith's Dot to see if there were any immediately obvious differences that might point to gender. To her untrained eyes, they looked identical, with the only real way to distinguish them being to hold on to them. Maybe an affinity developed after a while so one could pick out his or her own from a group. "If she doesn't, I can't think of anyone who would." She could ask Geoff to look it up for her, but it was a toss-up as to whether or not he would consider it worth his time, and the rest of the class didn't have him as a resource.

"It is kind of sad that these go homeless," she said, wiggling her fingers in front of what she thought might be Sunny's face the way she would have to a cat. "They're adorable." She bounced Sunny a little higher than before and smiled benignly at the creature's happily purring response. "I wonder how big they wind up?"

She laughed at Meredith's talk of her mother. "Geoff keeps Pandora when we're at home," she said. "Our sister's supposed to take care of her when we're not, but Daddy usually winds up doing it. Lavinia's not too crazy about her." Lavvie would be here next year. Helena hoped for Professor Kijewski's sake that the lesson wasn't about crups or Kneazles.

"I have a pair of twin cousins. Jessica and Andrea. They're fraternal." Truth to be told, no one looking at the pair of them would even think they were related. Jessie was little and pale, with eyes almost the color of aquamarines, while Drena, tallish and dark, looked more like Dinah than anyone, and even then it wasn't a close resemblance. "Only two siblings, though. I'm the middle child. Any brothers or sisters for you?" She figured she could assume from what had been said that Meredith's twins were her siblings, but she'd look a right fool if she was wrong.

"Yeah, you can hear a little difference in them," she agreed, repeating Mere and Merry in her head. "I'll answer to just about anything, but only - " she cut off at the blowup from a girl she recognized more by her braided blond hair than by her face and winced a little. Caedence Redoak wasn't someone Helena had had any real encounters with, for which she was several kinds of grateful. The other second years' reputation was enough to make her skeptical about walking away from such an encounter with a whole skin.

"I don't know her very well, myself," she said, looking away from her lest Caedence think she was staring and take offense to it. "I've heard she can be...volatile, though." She looked at Meredith for a moment, not wanting to wreck an acquaintance before it even got started properly with a misplaced word or three. "Is she as - er - forward as they say? I've heard crazy stories from Geoffrey, though Merlin only knows where he gets his information from."

OOC: Sorry about the delay. Finals are misery incarnate.\n\n
16 Helena As did yours. 88 Helena 0 5


Meredith

December 30, 2006 12:14 AM
OOC: No problem. I haven't been the best time wise either so don't worry about it.

BIC: “Me either, unless you know another expert.” Meredith said on who else would know how to find the gender of the puffskeins. “I’ve got a few books on animals at home, but I haven’t looked at them. I don’t spend enough time inside or sitting still to read them.” Meredith admitted with a laugh.

“Who wouldn’t want one of these? They’re like the perfect pet.” Meredith whole-heartedly agreed that it was sad to see something like a puffskein go homeless. She started slowly rotating Dot in a full circle with the tips of her fingers. Helena brought up a good point. How big could these little guys get? “I don’t know, but imagine if they grew to the size of a kneazle or something. Can you imagine a puff ball that big?” The image in her mind made her smile in amusement. No doubt she would have a strange dream about gigantic puffskeins that night.

Meredith nodded as Helena explained about her sister. She couldn’t understand why people didn’t like owls or mice, or pets like that. They weren’t dangerous. There’s a difference between owning an owl and, say, a dragon. The twins gave their mother a fright with an enchanted dragon kite once. Another hilarious episode. Obviously both she and Helena had strange family members. And then she was asked about siblings. Meredith always had fun talking about her brothers, especially the twins.

“Yup, I have three older brothers. There’s the twins, Max and Anthony. They’re fraternal too. They turned seventeen in April, which is a little scary because now they can do magic at home instead of just using little joke toys they bought.” Meredith laughed. “They love to torture mama, but they don’t go too far. They just play around with her because she’s a muggle. They mess around with all the muggles in Nashville, which aren’t many. Then there’s my oldest brother Ryan who’s twenty-one. He graduated from here a few years ago. He used to be more fun, but now he’s more business-like, sort of like daddy and works with him in the ministry and all that.” Meredith shrugged, not caring for that government nonsense. It was all gibberish to her anyway. "They still know how to have fun though, which is good.

Caedence’s yelling interrupted whatever Helena was saying. Meredith didn’t want to talk badly of Caedence, but her impressions on people didn’t leave much else to work with. She hoped Elly could break that reputation since she was the only one Caedence seemed to open up to. Helena looked to be trying to find a way to describe Caedence.

"Is she as - er - forward as they say? I've heard crazy stories from Geoffrey, though Merlin only knows where he gets his information from." Meredith frowned a little in thought and looked at Dot, wiggling gently in her finger.

“Well,” After a short pause she spoke again. There were some things that you just couldn’t rephrase “Yeah she is very forward. If you make her mad you’ll know it. She’s not a bad kid though, she’s just really…um,” she tried looking for her own word to describe her roommate, “defensive maybe? I don’t know. She and Elly are friends and I don’t not like her.” Wow, that sentence was a grammatical masterpiece. “What kind of stories did Geoffrey tell you? I don’t trust rumors.” Meredith asked out of pure curiosity, not to gossip. Gossiping was what Mama did with all of her lady friends on the weekends and Meredith was far from anything like that.\n\n
0 Meredith I guess both ways work. 0 Meredith 0 5


Helena

January 02, 2007 2:32 PM
Helena laughed along with Meredith about her activity levels. "I read a lot now, but not that kind of stuff. I'm more of a novel type." She grinned, shrugging half-apologetically. "I blame my mother. She went on some kind of chick lit kick while she was pregnant with me, and I guess some of it wore off."

She had discovered by accident that she was now reading more books in the average month than Geoffrey, but after she'd thought about it for a while, Helena had decided that it wasn't all that surprising. Her brother's social life might not have been much more flourishing than hers, but he had two roommates and Anne to contend with. Once she got away from her brother and future sister-in-law's well-meaning but madness-inducing efforts, Helena had to deal with neither. Unless there was a Quidditch practice, she didn't have much else to do but read or dream once she finished her homework.

"Oh, Lord," she said, her eyes getting big as she tried to envision a Kneazle-sized puffskein. "Invasion of the Giant Puffskeins. I can hear the radio serial now." She could visualize it, too, but she wasn't going to mention that. The radio serial comment had probably already done more than enough to support the (true) idea that she had an overactive imagination.

"Mum and Daddy both work in government," she said when Meredith finished talking about her brothers. "Just not for the same government, if you'll believe it. She's English, he's South Carolinian. Nothing too big, or our house would be a war zone." Secretaries and paper-pushers generally did stay out of the big leagues. "We're all wizards, as far as I know. Geoffrey's the know-it-all firstborn, and Lavinia's the spoiled-to-death baby. Daddy says I'm the good one, but that's because I was Sorted into his old House."

It was at least half a joke, but she couldn't help wondering if there was an element of truth to it. No one could have known for sure that she would go into Crotalus before it happened, but maybe there was some kind of affinity between people with personalities similar enough to wind up in the same House. It took less than a second of reflection to dismiss the bulk of the theory. She had never felt much of anything except the occasional bout of trepidation around other Crotali, and some of the older students would gladly dance on each other's graves, if one listened to the rumors.

Speaking of which -

Helena shrugged her shoulders. "I don't either, really, especially not in something like a school. It's hard to know if there's any truth to it, or if people are just making up junk to rip someone else to shreds. I'm not gullible enough to believe all of what Geoff tells me - I mean, one first year beating up every first and second year in Pecari at one time? Come on - but he usually puts enough truth into whatever he's saying that I wondered." The corners of her mouth twisted down, a halfhearted grimace. "His idea of looking after me, I gue -."

She was interrupted for the second time by an explosion from her yearmate. Her mouth fell open, but closed quickly around the only two words she could think of to summarize the situation:

"Oh, dear."\n\n
16 Helena 'Parently so. 88 Helena 0 5