Setting Up the Classroom (Again) on Charms

Professor Aaron McKindy

October 31, 2009 9:48 AM

Setting Up the Classroom (Again) by Professor Aaron McKindy

Aaron McKindy turned the knob of his old/new classroom, grinning with satisfaction as the heavy door swung open at his urging. The first time he’d arrived at this room, the man recalled, he had spent at least twenty minutes trying to magically unlock the door before even thinking about trying the knob. Things had changed a bit since then. For instance, this time Aaron was not entering Sonora as a complete unknown, turning to teaching simply because his application had been accepted by Manfred Bulla. He was returning to Sonora at the request of his old friend, Sadi Powell, and as a Head of House at that!

Levitating his medium-sized red trunk, Aaron nodded his head approvingly. The room was still a generic classroom, with desks lined up neatly in rows. It was painfully obvious that nobody had been in the room at all over the holidays. He let the trunk rest on one of the desks, then pulled out a small key to unlock it; Aaron McKindy had never been one to leave things about that could be magically unlocked, and he wasn’t about to begin now, especially after spending years teaching in magical schools.

The trunk opened to reveal a plethora of rolled up posters, a mirror, and various other things. It had obviously been the victim of an especially optimizing Enlargement Charm as the trunk held much more than its natural capacity.

Aaron pulled out the posters and began setting up his old/new classroom, sticking the posters to the wall with a Semi-Permanent Sticking Charm that would probably survive what most students could manage to come up with while still allowing removal should the time come again--not that Aaron was planning on being thick enough to leave his position at Sonora once more. He decided to alternate between wizards and Muggles of notable achievement. Nicholas Flamel with the Sorcerer’s Stone, then Albert Camus, a favorite author. Bowman Wright, inventor of the current Golden Snitch, then Manfred von Richtofen. Abraham Peasegood, Robert Jordan. Aaron slipped into an almost trance-like state, sticking the posters up. The repetitive action was soothing, and he probably wouldn’t have noticed if a tornado had hit right next-door.

Eventually, though, even his seemingly endless supply of posters ran out. Aaron smiled in satisfaction at the walls. Most of the wizards, thrilled to be out of the trunk after so many years of storage (as Aaron hadn’t had a classroom at RMI, he had never taken the posters out), were already moving from poster to poster, chatting happily. The Muggle posters didn’t move, of course, even though Aaron had spelled them to speak occasionally. Returning to the trunk, Aaron pulled out a medium-sized, bronze-rimmed mirror and walked carefully to the back of the room, where he hung it in the middle of the wall, between the two windows. Perfect for letting him know unobtrusively what students in the back were doing.

He glanced into the mirror, examining his reflection. Aaron McKindy was approximately six feet in height with longish black hair and grey-green eyes. His height and eyes set him very much apart from most of his short, brown eyed family. His clothing set him apart from most of the sane world.

Aaron was garbed in the same white and grey trainers he’d worn the first time around, but even though he enjoyed the comparative freedom of Muggle styles to the robes of wizards (and dressed as such whenever possible), Aaron was currently wearing his best dress robes: crimson, with a silver, moving dragon Charmed into the design. He gave himself a friendly nod in the mirror, then went over to the red trunk to extract the final item—an old-fashioned top hat made of huge, transparent pink bubbles.

Now that everything really important was worked out, Aaron conjured a cup of hot tea, sat atop a desk, and began illegibly scribbling out ideas for what his first Head of House speech was going to be like.

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Amelia Pierce

November 09, 2009 4:10 PM

Swinging By to Say Hi by Amelia Pierce

It had been a long time since Amelia Pierce had last been in a school. A lifetime really, though actual chronology placed it closer to a decade. She been a different person back then, and even though she'd been the coach at Durmstrang, all the way across the ocean and in a foreign country, the world had been smaller then. She'd been smaller.

Smaller in mind and smaller in experience, if not so much in body.

And now she was back in a school. A different school, to be sure, but there were similarities enough to give her deja vu. Except that she'd never been a Head of House before. She tried to remember hers, back in Aether. Plato, hadn't it been? Hagen Plato. At least at the end. She could barely recall her first Head of House speech. She couldn't even honestly say that she recalled if it had been Plato who had given it, or if she'd started off with somebody else. It was twenty-two years ago, after all.

Thirty-three wasn't old by any means, but sometimes she really felt she was supposed to be older than she was. She couldn't have possibly have been eleven in this same lifetime. Twenty-one had been far enough ago that she barely recognized herself. Eleven was some girl she had a passing physical resemblance to. Maybe a second cousin on her father's side.

Amelia shook her head to clear the depressing thought. She was not old. As far as witches go, she was actually still quite young. And as such, she was going to go out there and meet some of her new co-workers. Maybe even make some friends. If she was really lucky, she might happen upon some single guy that she could use to disprove the persistent rumours that she was a lesbian that wouldn't go away no matter how many times she denied them. Being involved in both Quidditch and DISCUSS was death on a girl's social calendar.

But she was way ahead of herself there. There were certain formalities that had to be observed first, before she could start waving around a boyfriend. Like meeting people. And then liking them. And then getting to know them. And then still liking them.

So she was going to start with the meeting people bit. She liked to imagine she was somewhat friendly. Granted, her best friend was her grandmother (which was even more disturbing when one considered that Druscella was the one who formally disowned her) but she knew how to meet people. She could interact with others on a social level and create relationships of mutual positive opinions. That they somehow never quite developed into friendships was not indicative of any failing on Amelia's part.

She was polite, she had a sense of humor, she was remarkably sane, she thought she was moderately pretty, and she had a passionate dedication to the important things in her life. She really didn't understand what the problem was. It couldn't just be the country music.

As she turned down the hallway where the more academic subjects had their classrooms, Amelia thought she heard a scratching sound coming from one of them. The door was open as she first stuck her head in, and then leaned against the frame as she watched a decidedly, um, colorful man scribbling away at his desk. Her eyes briefly took in the rest of the room, slightly impressed by the sheer surface area of space taken up by posters.

She gave a polite nod to a wizard she tentatively identified as Bowman Wright before turning her attention back to the real life wizard at the desk. Almost certainly not boyfriend material. She'd have to disown herself if she dated someone with that taste in headwear.

"Hi," she said after another few seconds had passed. She stepped inside the classroom and held out her hand, "I'm Amelia Pierce, the new Quidditch Coach and Head of Crotalus. Boston Pierces, not New Hampshire. Or California." The second qualification was added as an afterthought, when it occurred to her that people at Sonora were far more likely to recognize the surname from the California branch rather than either of the Eastern branches, seeing as how the Californians were the only branch to have sent any students to the school so far. Pierces of her family came in three very distinct flavors and it was of utmost importance to get identified as the right one. To be mistaken for the wrong branch was a mortal insult to not only the individual, but both branches involved.

"Thought I'd introduce myself, say hi, maybe pick your brain about school customs and such. I went to Salem Institute. Aether." The House designation almost certainly wasn't necessary. It was likely meaningless to those who never attended. Well, unless one was pureblooded, in which case it would be known that Aether was Salem's only respectable House even if the other three were complete mysteries - just as she'd known Crotalus was the only worthy House at Sonora long before she'd considered coaching here. (Worthy, of course, was a matter of opinion, but even after all this time, Amelia couldn't quite shake the House bias ingrained since birth.)

For those that did go to Salem, her black robes with purple trim and the Aether emblem were a rather more tasteful version of a Quidditch uniform they'd recognize all too well, making any House declarations utterly redundant. Amelia didn't wear these particular robes very often, but she'd been feeling nostalgic that morning when she got dressed. And, perhaps, she'd felt just a bit guilty for her shifting House loyalties now that she'd agreed to take on the mantle of Crotalus Head of House. The robe reassured that niggling insecurity that needed to know she'd always be an Aether first.

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