Do I have to? on Charms

Professor Aaron McKindy

July 27, 2011 8:01 PM

Talking About Feelings [Years IV - V] by Professor Aaron McKindy

For the most part, Aaron McKindy was of the opinion that the Sonora Charms curriculum was fairly well-balanced. It took a bit of theory and a bit of practise, mixed it up in a wide variety of useful spells, and spat out kids who could discuss famous Charmsmasters and magically clean their own dishes. Since, realistically, most students would be using Charms for no more than that, things were all well and good.

On the other hand, there were some parts of the curriculum that made Aaron cringe to teach. He did not, for example, believe it was either ethical or responsible to teach a group of first through third years how to play with fire. He believed this as primarily due to his position of Pecari Head of House, and his disinclination to be woken up in the middle of the night only to find that a group of rowdy first and second years had decided to light the furniture on fire.

Another thing that he was not particularly inclined to teach his students how to do, but was going to anyway because he wasn’t quite as friendly with this Headmaster as he had been with the previous Headmistress, was how to manipulate each other’s’ emotions. Teenagers were, as a rule, emotionally unstable to begin with. Merlin bless, he wasn’t a paragon of emotional stability either. The last thing any of them really needed was a series of spells to make things worse.

And yet, they would be tested on them at the end of their fifth year, so teach them Aaron would.

“Good morning,” he greeted each student by name as they walked through the heavy, oaken door. It was ten minutes until class began, and as each of the early-comers walked in, he handed them a stone. Each stone was of a different shape and colour and didn’t really have much else to it, aside from a charm that would wear off thirty minutes after it was activated. “Keep the rock in your hand, we’ll go over what we’re doing today once everyone gets here, all right?”

The tophat made of pink bubbles was gone today, leaving Aaron’s moderately wavy, black hair uncovered. He hadn’t wanted to wear anything that might aggravate his students, given the lesson, and he had dressed in blandly-coloured robes to further that goal. Overall, he looked much more like a middle-aged government employee than the eclectic professor he generally was. No doubt, Aaron realised, that was making some of his students wonder.

Once everyone had arrive, Aaron shut the door and stepped onto the raised dais at the front of the classroom that his personal desk sat on. Unfortunately, this might be a more eventful class than normal, and he had taken all necessary precautions by Vanishing anything that might be moderately breakable and locking Godric (much to the cat’s dissatisfaction, as indicated by a series of painful-looking scratches currently swelling on Aaron’s hands and forearms) in his office up in Pecari.

“Today, we’re going to be learning about emotional manipulation,” Aaron began, waving his wand at the chalkboard behind his desk where four spells appeared in large, spikey handwriting along with their definitions:

Laetus --> cheers target up. Too much enthusiasm can lead to hystarics in target.
Pullus --> makes target sad; counteracts cheering charm
Ira --> makes target angry; counteracts calming draught or calming charms
Aequus --> calms target; counters anger charm

“The rock that each one of you is holding has been imbued with one of these charms. While working with the partner directly to your left, you will spend the next thirty minutes figuring out which charm has been added to the rock and how to counter it.

“In a moment, I will activate the charms on your rocks and they will begin to affect you. This is also a test of how well your magical control works under emotional pressure – as some of you will recall, accidental magic frequently results from a specific emotional state, and can sometimes occur again in older witches or wizards if that emotional state is replicated. Any questions?” Aaron paused, assuring that he had answered all concerns before continuing. “The first three pairs who figure out which charms are affecting them and counter the charms appropriately will be rewarded with a bar of Honeyduke’s finest for each partner. Begin!”

With a wave of his wand, Aaron activated the dormant charms in the rocks, and prepared himself for his room of emotionally unstable teenaged students to get even more out of control.

Merlin bless.

|OOC|
Follow all site rules, please and thanks, and tag Aaron if you need help. Remember that emotions are portrayed in different ways for different people! For example, some people seem calm when angry, or tend towards the manic side of happy, or sound like they’re laughing when they’re crying. Be creative, explore your characters, and have fun!

Enjoy :D

Subthreads:

I don't think I enjoy that idea by Jane Carey, Teppenpaw

Do I have to? by Nic Sawyer, Crotalus with Nina Brockert, Pecari

0 Professor Aaron McKindy Talking About Feelings [Years IV - V] 0 Professor Aaron McKindy 1 5

Jane Carey, Teppenpaw

July 29, 2011 10:48 PM

I don't think I enjoy that idea by Jane Carey, Teppenpaw

Jane smiled when Professor McKindy greeted her by name, repressing, as had become habit since she came to Sonora, the old urge to curtsy, as she would have to one of her tutors. That wasn’t how things were done here at Sonora, and she tried not to be any stranger than she could help while still not departing entirely from the way she’d been raised. “Good morning, sir,” she said, and blinked when she was handed a stone.

“Thank you,” she said, though normally being handed a rock was not really a matter to feel gratitude over, then paused when she noticed the scratches on his hands. She didn’t think of Professor McKindy as a very violent person, but…didn’t he have a cat? Maybe that was it. She nodded to the directions about just holding on to the stone for now before moving on to her seat. It was something to do with the lesson, so thanking him had been logical as well as, she thought, appropriate.

As she sat down, she noticed that he was dressed much more like a tutor than normal, which she supposed might have had something to do with wanting to curtsy, and that the room was a little more barren than usual. She decided the first thing most likely didn’t have anything to do with the second, and that they were most likely not going to be throwing rocks at each other, so she waited to hear what it was about.

When she heard the topic, part of her mind decided the classroom must be for another class while her hands moved over the desktop as though she were smoothing it down, twice, nervously. Emotional manipulation? That sounded…dangerous. She didn’t know what she thought about that, especially with them being taught that. What if….

That thought had no more than begun to form, though, before she shook her head slightly to dismiss it. Her classmates were not going to go around magically manipulating her emotions. That would be just silly. Just because she’d had an experience with bad people who would do horrible things to someone just because it was amusing to them didn’t mean the whole world was full of them, and besides, half the class might not be able to do anything well enough to really affect her behavior much.

Still, she flinched when she thought he activated the rocks, though she didn’t think she felt anything. Not yet. Her jaw clenching slightly, she turned toward the person next to her and forced a smile. She was not going to lose control of her abilities. She was a lady, and a lady could watch a city burn in front of her without losing control of herself or her powers. Everything was going to be fine. “Shall we work together?” she said, her tone a little flatter than usual.

It was no good. It wasn’t good enough. She could never do it right, she never would…she was going to disappoint her mother all her life, even more than she had when her mother was still alive. She touched the side of her face, her hand tightening on the rock. It couldn’t be that way, but it just seemed sort of inevitable to her. She couldn’t be her best, she couldn’t be anything. She had tried…

She shook her head a little. Silly. Her mother was dead; what happened to her, here, was none of her mother’s concern. Whatever the afterlife included, she thought it must involve things that were more interesting than her and her little failures. She needed to concentrate on this.

0 Jane Carey, Teppenpaw I don't think I enjoy that idea 0 Jane Carey, Teppenpaw 0 5

Nic Sawyer, Crotalus

July 31, 2011 1:02 PM

Do I have to? by Nic Sawyer, Crotalus

Charms was no DADA, but Nic liked it better than most of his other classes, if only because it let him maintain an almost perfectly average grade without too much effort, and he could be equally average in both his written work and his practical work, which was unusual for his Sonora classes. In potions, not being perfect in the practical risked serious injury, so he had to bomb all his tests and homeworks, and in transfiguration, he actually did have trouble performing the spellwork, which make him need to do well on his essays to make up for it, and in short, he suspected it was showing that he wanted to get only mediocre grades. In Charms, though, he thought he was pulling off 'unremarkable student' with ease. That was exactly where Nic wanted to be, at least for now.

Once next year hit, he might need to change strategies, if only because CATS were important and they would affect critical things like what classes he was allowed to take at the RATS level and what he could do with the rest of his life, but for now, it was far more critical that nobody though he was a geek.

This lesson though . . . Nic frowned doubtfully down at the stone he'd been given and told to hold. Professors this year seemed really keen on making him do stupid things like walk into haunted forests and carry cursed rocks that would make him emotional. Nic was not generally an emotional guy. He liked not being an emotional guy. It was his thing. He worked hard at it. Nobody would describe him as 'tall, dark, and looming' if he started grinning all the time or even yelling at people. No, he was calm, and he was silent, because that was scarier. Every movie he ever watched with a really good villain in it proved that.

If he got an Aequus rock, that wouldn't be too bad. Nobody would recognize a change. He defined calm. But Nic was absolutely sure he was not that lucky.

He had the happy one. He knew he did. He didn't know how he knew it, but the rock in his hand was charged with the Laetus cheering charm. It was going to make him smile. He hated it already, and he deepened his scowl, just to prove - while he still had the chance - that Nic Sawyer was not a happy cheery sort of person.

And sure enough, when Professor McKindy cruelly activated the stones, a very weird feeling began to bubble up through him. It was foreign and unfamiliar and Nic was sort of alarmed by how light he was starting to feel. He was dangerously underweight under normal circumstances and if he started floating, that was surely a very bad sign.

But his feet never left the floor and his rear end never left the chair. Gravity just seemed a little more indifferent to him than it usually was. Also, his face felt strange. Looser, kind of, and he realized his glower had gone away without his say-so. Instead, his eyes felt kind of drier around the edges, like if they had opened up wider than he normally let them go, and his cheeks had a strange kind of tension to them that Nic wasn't entirely sure what to make of.

More than that, though, was the oddly good feeling he felt toward all of his classmates and he found himself turning to the nearest one sharing the back row with him and speaking - speaking! - to them in rush of words that had to at least tie if not exceed the number of words he had uttered over the previous three months combined.

"Hi! I'm Nic Sawyer. I think I have the Laetus Cheering charm! I knew I did even before Professor McKindy activated them. I don't even think it was pessimism! I think I might turning into a Seer! I was hoping for the calm one, but this really isn't as bad as I thought it would be. So maybe I'm not a Seer! That's a relief! Do people normally feel lighter when they're happy? It's kind of freaky, you know? You'd think you'd always feel like you weighed the same no matter what you mood was, right?" Oh, Nic realized suddenly, that weird pressure in his cheeks? That was him smiling. He wondered why he'd been so freaked out about that earlier.

1 Nic Sawyer, Crotalus Do I have to? 165 Nic Sawyer, Crotalus 0 5

Nina Brockert, Pecari

August 11, 2011 9:00 AM

Unfortunately by Nina Brockert, Pecari

Nina was not really having a good year. Well, being named prefect was pretty awesome and it actually made her feel special instead of just different.Plus, maybe her great-grandpa would be happy with her for once. He never seemed to approve of the Pecari because Nina wasn't especially proper. She hated pureblood parties. They were just another place that she didn't belong.

However, the dance stuff was really bothering Nina. The fact that she probably wouldn't have a date and would be utterly humiliated. Nina really wanted to change it, protest it, despite the fact that it seemed a very Chelsea-ish thing to do. But the fifth year didn't have the...support system her older sister had. Chelsea had had the other "Ladies" backing her up. Nina had nobody other than Autumn and Hope really.

She hated to admit it, hated how desperate it sounded, but she would take just about anyone for the first dance. Nina didn't even need a date for the whole time, she just didn't want to be embarassed during the first dance. The Pecari would even dance with a first year.

The fifth year listened to Professor McKindy's lesson. Nina generally liked Charms, but she really did not like the sounds of today's lesson. Emotions were generally better left not displayed in front of a lot of people. It was scorned upon in pureblood society and, more importantly, people would make fun of you if you got upset and that just made things worse because you would get even more upset and then...picked on more and so on. A vicious cycle.

Calm wouldn't be so bad and neither was happy. Nina sighed to herself and picked up her rock when the person next to her began to speak.

"Hi! I'm Nic Sawyer. I think I have the Laetus Cheering charm! I knew I did even before Professor McKindy activated them. I don't even think it was pessimism! I think I might turning into a Seer! I was hoping for the calm one, but this really isn't as bad as I thought it would be. So maybe I'm not a Seer! That's a relief! Do people normally feel lighter when they're happy? It's kind of freaky, you know? You'd think you'd always feel like you weighed the same no matter what you mood was, right?"

A white hot feeling of irritation flashed through Nina and she felt the urge to throw her rock at his head. His hyperactive happiness made her want to shout obscenities and hex him into oblivion. Nic's demeanor reminded Nina of Mel. Mel with her perfect happy life. Mel who got everything she wanted and had no regard for others whatsoever.

It only made Nina angrier and all she wanted to do was wipe that stupid happy smile off Nic Sawyer's face. "Oh, shut up!" The fifth year prefect yelled at the younger Crotalus. "You're babbling nonsensically and it's incredibly annoying! Shut the" here Nina uttered a word unfit for polite company, but she did not care, not about anything, "up!"

She clenched her fists, which was pretty silly, because Nic Sawyer was a lot bigger than Nina and punching his face in was probably not a good idea. And that was the only thing keeping her from doing so right now.

11 Nina Brockert, Pecari Unfortunately 156 Nina Brockert, Pecari 0 5