Professor Aaron McKindy
November 17, 2010 9:35 AM
Charms 1&2: Who Are You? by Professor Aaron McKindy
The thing Professor Aaron McKindy missed most about his original home in upstate New York was the drizzly January days, when the weather hadn’t quite decided to snow but hadn’t quite decided to rain either. The climates of Arizona and Colorado didn’t really lend themselves to too many drizzly days, days when you could just curl up with a good book or some homework (not that he had that anymore, of course), which Aaron felt was a huge loss to the inhabitants of the state. It hadn’t taken much to Charm windows into his office and quarters that reflected the current weather in upstate New York, though, and when Aaron had woken up that morning it had been the sort of drizzly January day he loved. On the other hand, when he stepped out of his office and into the real world, he was forced to come to grips with the fact that today was, as usual, one of the ‘sunny Arizona’ variety.Still, he had a class to teach, which was why he headed into his classroom anyway. The real bummer was that the activity he had planned for his first and second years today was definitely a rainy day sort of activity. After a few minutes of set-up in his classroom, the black-haired Italian checked his watch. He still had an hour before the kids would arrive. It might be pushing it, but--
When the first students for his Beginners class began to arrive, Aaron was deeply focused on a medium-sized window that had appeared over the bookshelves at the back of the room. No more than five minutes after the first kids had arrived, the window was portraying a steady drizzle of rain outside of it. The man smiled at his work and put his tophat made of pink bubbles back on top of his head, then strolled to the front of the classroom, stopping to chat with students on the way. His first years had come a long way and seemed to be more-or-less comfortable in class now. The second years, of course, knew that Charms had a relaxed environment. Not that Aaron made it an easy class; he just enjoyed what he did and loved to share that with his students.
Since about mid-October, the Beginner class had been learning different types of movement charms. They had worked on object moving for practical purposes (mobile levitation and the levi- group of spells) and object moving for not-so practical purposes (with Aaron’s patented ‘sugar cookie’ lesson, in which the students baked cookies and then Charmed them to do things like wink). Today, they were going to focus on making two-dimensional objects move. It was a bit of a tougher lesson and Aaron knew of a few who might have problems with it, but he hoped that it would be a fun one nevertheless.
Hands deep in the pockets of his Muggle blue-jeans, a t-shirt with a Hungarian Horntail on it—a gift from Jessie, his eighteen-year-old biological daughter who was currently studying at Colorado University Boulder Campus to become a Muggle vet despite the six years she spent at Hogwarts before dropping out—Aaron leaned against his desk and waited for the class to settle down. Once they had, he began.
“Good morning guys,” he said with a friendly smile, grey-green eyes sweeping the room. At the back, atop the bookshelves and under the new window, were stacks of Muggle magazines of every sort imaginable. Jessie had helped him gather those. Despite his time spent living as a Muggle, Aaron was still a little bit uncomfortable with many Muggle things. He could function, but anything too complicated like magazine subscriptions and he just got confused.
“Today we’re going to work on animating two-dimensional things. I know it seems like that would be easier than the three-dimensional animations you’ve been doing for the past month, but I’ve found that it’s actually a little bit more difficult. Does anyone remember how we did mobile levitation?” A few hands went up, and Aaron called on one of the students. They gave the correct answer—something about the levi- family of spells—and Aaron gave them a thumbs-up. He had a smart group of kids here. They usually caught on pretty quick.
“Right. Well today we’re going to work with another family of spells, called the lapsi family. It works the same way as the levi group except that instead of mobile levitation, it makes the thing in question move slowly in an action that would be natural to it in life. There are ways to determine what it does, but that’s more advanced so for now we’re not going to touch on it. So for example, if you took a photo of a cat,” Aaron held up a large photo of the family cat, Godric, who seemed to have taken up following Melody around as opposed to attacking the ankles of people around the house, something everyone was thankful for, “and enchant it--Lapsicattus--then it should—there we go,” the photo-Godric slowly looked at the class disdainfully and began to lick a paw.
“So that’s what we’re doing today. But to make it a bit more fun, I want you guys to make collages about yourselves. What you like, the things that make you you. There are a bunch of Muggle magazines in the back and some wizarding magazines over on that side table. The wizarding magazines don’t already have moving pictures in them,” it had been hard to hunt those down; moving pictures had been all the rage since that developing potion had been discovered in the ‘20s that made two-dimensional movement much more durable than the charms his kids were learning today, “so don’t worry about that. There’re scissors and paste on both tables and poster paper should be under each of your desks. On your collages, there should be at least five pictures that move. You’ll have two class periods to finish this so don’t worry about time today, but when you guys are done, I want to hang them up in the hallway,” Aaron smiled at the group. He was really excited for this project.
“Anyway, go ahead and get started! Just raise your hand if you need any help,” the dark-haired man said. The class began to move around, getting ready to start their collages, and he smiled. He loved his Beginner class.
|OOC|
Minimum ten sentences, please! But the more you do, the more House Points your House gets. Be creative and have fun! Tag me in your subject line if your character needs Aaron.
Subthreads: I think therefore I am by Samantha Hamilton with Marcus Williams (Pecari), Samantha
You're my teacher - you should know who I am. by James Owen with Kate Bauer, Teppenpaw, James
Someone who doesn't want to do this. by Autumn Collins, Crotalus with Sam Bauer, Crotalus
I don't know! by Ryan O'Malley, Crotalus with Sophie Jamison [Pecari]
I'm Kirstenna by Kirstenna Melcher,Teppenpaw
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Professor Aaron McKindy
Charms 1&2: Who Are You?
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Professor Aaron McKindy
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Autumn Collins, Crotalus
November 22, 2010 6:51 PM
Someone who doesn't want to do this. by Autumn Collins, Crotalus
Normally, Autumn liked Charms. Professor McKindy tended to have fun lessons. For example, she had immensely enjoyed the cookie baking lesson last year. It reminded her of home, and being set so close to midterm, she hadn't even gotten homesick. Besides, Autumn had friends at Sonora and that helped immensely with homesickness.However, it wasn't going to help her with today's lesson. As soon as Professor McKindy, normally a fun and creative professor, announced that they had to make collages about themselves, Autumn felt a bit like she was going to throw up.
She hated stuff like this. Oh sure, she was artistic and making a collage in itself was fun. However, Autumn was very shy and she always felt self-conscious. She was extremely uncomfortable letting most of her classmates-or the first years for that matter-see who she really was. What if they made fun of her?
Autumn couldn't let that happen but she didn't see how she had a choice. She couldn't just refuse to do an assignment. She'd get in trouble if she did and the Crotalus hated being in trouble. Not that it happened much. Getting in trouble meant disappointing someone and she hated doing that. Plus, it would cause a scene and she wouldn't like that either. Autumn hated being the center of attention.
The second year sighed and went to get a magazine. She felt resigned to her fate as she went and found an art magazine. A better way for Autumn to tell about herself was to do her own drawings-which was exactly why she was going to stick with cut-outs and maybe just doodle around the borders and what not. Autumn often couldn't help doodling anyway, so that was something about her.
After only a few moments of working-or rather reading the article about an exhibit in New York City-Autumn felt someone standing over her. Fortunately, she hadn't gotten very far on her project. Which was both good and bad. Good because they couldn't see her expressing who she truly was and bad because she didn't want to get in trouble.
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Autumn Collins, Crotalus
Someone who doesn't want to do this.
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Autumn Collins, Crotalus
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Sam Bauer, Crotalus
November 24, 2010 11:04 PM
Well, there's always lying. by Sam Bauer, Crotalus
Whenever he walked into a room, Sam looked around it without thinking, and never did think about it if everything was the same as it had been the last time he was in that room. Three steps into the Charms room, he was startled into consciously noticing it when he caught sight of the window he was fairly sure had never been there before, and the weather he was far more sure never happened here during the daylight hours.Rain. It probably wasn't real - he was pretty sure that the existence of a window on that wall would just not work - but it looked real, and that was good enough. Sam wasn't exactly a fan of bad weather, but the lack of it at Sonora had been getting on his nerves since he'd started thinking he saw a pattern in the weather charms at Sonora. That the pattern he saw probably only existed in his head was irrelevant; it was a spell, and unless someone was consciously fooling with it every day - which the school history said no one was - then the loop would follow patterns, even if that pattern was to simulate random chance. This wasn't chance, either, but it was something different to look at.
For a few minutes, anyway. Then it was down to work. For a moment, he wondered why anyone would bother with a spell that made images move in a realistic manner when there was already a potion for that, but then it hit him - outside applications. Great for a distraction, if it could go much larger than this and he were ever in a position where he needed someone to think something was going on that wasn't for just one second. Not that Sam intended to ever end up in a situation like that, but hey, stuff happened. His mother hadn't exactly been planning on a kid, or his uncle Jake on his wife turning out to be a gold digger, or his uncle Isaac on marrying a woman who was an even better con than he was that one time. His family had the worst luck in the world. Knowing a trick to get out of a tight spot might come in useful sometime.
Of course, that knowledge did nothing to make his immediate situation more palatable. Sam had always, even in Muggle school, had a problem with assignments that asked him to get all introspective and then put the results of his introspection on public display. He didn't like letting people get too close, or really know a lot about what he did and did not like. It was stupid, since now he had nothing that anyone could possibly find a use for, but he was naturally introspective enough to know it was because he'd had too many years of lying about who and what he was to keep Lacy Johnson and the rest of the Muggle world ignorant of things that would reduce them to running through the streets of Chicago wearing tinfoil hats and carrying machine guns if they ever found out about them. Hard to shake off almost eleven years and a summer of that.
Maybe he'd lie. Who was McKindy to contradict him about his own alleged personality? Especially since even Sam wasn't entirely sure what his actual personality was. Maybe it could be whatever he put together for McKindy's benefit while he was in this class. First, though, he had to look through some of the magazines.
Well, the fashion ones weren't about to do it. Not at all. He had no interest whatsoever in women's clothes, and if he cut anything out of the men's clothing sections, he'd look like a desperate poseur wannabe - which was probably more pathetic than being an actual desperate poseur - because his wardrobe was pretty much made up of jeans and t-shirts. Since he only had one known set of relatives and none of them had died since he'd been around, he didn't even own anything nice to wear to funerals. Not getting something had also become a bit of a superstition for him - if he ever did, then he'd meet his paternal grandma or something just in time for her to kick the bucket, and that wouldn't be cool for anyone.
The one about cars was no good, too. To use them would have been to conceal his actual thoughts on the subject - or to use what he thought was irony - but not only would Rachel kill him if she associated the thing with him, he also was not that crazy about being overly affiliated with the Muggle world. He wasn't ashamed of his origins, but nor did he wish to incur the wrath of anyone who'd been fooled by his pretty cousin's shiny veneer and was now feeling up to a bit of "Burn the Muggle-Descended-Person."
If they'd done this before midterm, he could have cut out some menorahs and angels or something and talked about his family's religious beliefs, but it was January and he didn't feel much like being the poster child for Celebrating Our Differences. And Rachel would kill him again. Girl was going to end up with some serious identity issues at the rate she was going; the only thing she'd remained consistent on in the years Sam had known her was her ability to beat him up pretty much at will.
In any case, this Celebrating Our Personalities In The Hall was presenting a serious problem for him. Anything half-true would have negative consequences if anyone bothered to look at the signature on the poster, and anything that was a lie in what he had seen so far either was so not true that even a professor teaching basically everyone in the school and therefore unlikely to know more about him than maybe what he looked like would catch it or made him look like he was the one with identity issues. This project was going to be harder than he'd thought.
He stood up to return the magazines he'd grabbed and try another batch and noticed that Autumn Collins didn't seem to have gotten very far. Weird; he had no basis for it, since she was quiet to the point of being weirdly easy to overlook, but he'd always thought of her as a natural school person. Then she noticed him noticing. "Having trouble with this, too?" he asked, trying to cover for the awkwardness of having been caught looking at someone else's Person Poster.
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Sam Bauer, Crotalus
Well, there's always lying.
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Sam Bauer, Crotalus
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Autumn
November 28, 2010 9:46 PM
In this case, I'd consider it. by Autumn
The person who'd been looking at her work turned out to be Sam Bauer, her year and housemate. He seemed pleasant enough but not someone Autumn wanted to share about herself with. It wasn't anything personal but she just didn't know the other Crotalus very well and she wasn't willing to bare her soul to just anyone.That's why this assignment was so awful for her. Professor McKindy wasn't just making them do this to turn into him, he was going to display the collages in the Hall . That meant everyone in the whole school would learn stuff about Autumn. That opened her up to potential ridicule by everyone.
She was starting to feel a little angry at Professor McKindy. It seemed cruel to do this to the students. If people made fun of her, it would be on his head. Autumn didn't understand how he could do this to them all. Sure, some people, people like Kirstenna Melcher, would be fine. The Teppenpaw girl didn't seem to care what others thought about her at all.
But Autumn did care. She wasn't like Kirstenna, or Nina,who had that loud outgoing personality that people loved and she hated that her own shy, quiet artistic personality would be on display. Besides, what if people thought her collage was ugly or something? That was almost as bad to her as being criticized for her personality.
Maybe she'd be better off taking a failing grade. She could make it up easily, Autumn was generally good at Charms and all sorts of school stuff. She was a natural at it, just like at art. It was just this assignment the Crotalus was not personally comfortable with. Maybe she could even ask Professor McKindy for some make-up work. Autumn would be happy to animate a picture, she just didn't want everyone to see who she was.
She smiled politely at Sam. "Yeah, a little bit." Autumn was sort of glad she wasn't alone in that. Not that she wanted Sam to have to suffer too, she just was glad not to be the only one having trouble.
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Autumn
In this case, I'd consider it.
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Autumn
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Sam
December 13, 2010 7:57 PM
Desperate times, desperate measures, you know. by Sam
And now he was in a position where he needed to say things, but could think of very little to say. Sam was sure this was a sign of some rare magical power only bestowed upon one in every generation. He was like Buffy or something, only with special awkwardness powers instead of special magical crime fighting powers. Maybe, if he got a ridiculously powerful BFF at some point, he could get him or her to turn the rest of the second year guys into awkward failures just like him. Strength in numbers and all that.Of course, then he’d have to deal with the ‘best friend turning to seriously dark arts when angry’ thing upon occasion, so maybe he was better off being a solitary failure. Besides, while he’d only seen that show in reruns, and was therefore sure he’d missed good bits of it, he had stopped actually liking anything other than the fight scenes very much after season two. Since this was his season two, and he was pretty sure he wouldn’t be very good at hand-to-hand combat even if he were taught it, he thought he might as well go ahead and pass on any correlation to Buffy.
“Sorry it’s hitting you, too,” he said. There. Nice, simple, and honest. Amazing how that could work. He should recommend it to his cousins. “My plan was just to stick something neutral up, but now I’m having to decide what that is. Want me to bring you some more magazines back when I go to get mine?” Autumn was a girl, which meant most magazines were marketed with people like her in mind. She should be able to find something to work with, and then, even if his grade didn’t turn out fantastic, he would have done his good deed for the day.
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Sam
Desperate times, desperate measures, you know.
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Sam
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