Professor Light
November 19, 2011 12:00 AM
Sticks and Stones {3-5} by Professor Light
“... okay, seriously, where is my wand?” Tipping precariously over the cliff of Frantic, Caesar dropped to his knees, palms pressed against the floor, his fingers curling, bending to peer anxiously beneath his desk. “Come on... don’t do this to me!” Anora’s letter, like all of Anora’s letters, had come at a bad time for him. ‘Yes, fantastic. You had another baby. Yes, fantastic. Your husband is amazing. Yes, fantastic. Your life has turned out exactly the way you wanted it to.’ He had spent all night last night outlining a lesson that centered on how to make letters implode once the desired recipient held the envelope in their hand. After a few drinks his temper was calmed and his sanity had been restored, but while he wasn’t quite drunk, he was tipsy enough that he had struggled to remember exactly how the Sobering Charm was pronounced. Too afraid of oversleeping (again) he had made his way to his classroom late last night, and spent the entire morning planning an appropriate lesson, grateful that he hadn’t had a first period class.Checking the clock, Caesar gave up on searching for his wand and decided to use the remaining twenty minutes of agonized freedom re-outlining his lesson so that he wouldn’t have to demonstrate the appropriate wandwork. Rising to his feet, Caesar straightened only to slump back into his chair. “Oy!” Springing up a second later, Caesar turned to stare at the seat that had burned him. “For merlinssake...” He was wearing his robes backwards, and had sat on the pocket holding his wand. Caesar paused, straightening fully, his back stiff, his shoulders tensed and raised. Taking a deep breath through his nostrils, he filled his thoughts with anger. ‘HateAnorahateAnorahateAnorahatehatehateAnora!’ He let out the breath through his mouth, his lips parting just slightly, and all the hate, anxiety, and nervousness were drained. ‘Got nothin’ but love.’ “Alrighty then,” Turning his silver robes around, Caesar pulled out his wand (undamaged) and began cleaning up the traces of fatigue on his face, the wrinkles on his robes, and neatened his desk. “Okay, okay, okay...”
Muttering senseless, semi-positive words, Caesar got ready for his Intermediate students. He’d had them for a week, but wasn’t really sure what he thought of them yet. He’d gone to a slightly bigger school when he was a kid, so he was used to classes that were divided between each and every year. At Sonora he had to evaluate the difference in education that the third, fourth, and fifth years had. After going over the spells they’d each already learned, looking for overlapping gaps, overlapping connections, Caesar
“Hey, afternoon!” Caesar welcomed the incoming students as the clock finally caught up to where his mind had been for the past ten minutes. “Drop your essays on my desk before you take a seat, por favor.” Having been a victim of a love potion once - ‘HateAnorahateAnorahatehatehateAnora!’ - Caesar was wary of any and all potions and charms that manipulated the emotions of another human being in any way. He’d had the Intermediate class study Cheering Charms, taught them the incantation Laetissimus because he didn’t believe in withholding information out of fear, and then gave them an excerpt of his dissertation to read where he outlined how simple magic commonly perceived as harmless could potentially lead to the three Unforgivable Curses. For example, Cheering Charms leading to the Imperius Curse. Using his own dissertation as a resource, as well as three other text resources where one supported and the other two contradicted his opinion, he asked them all to write an essay on where they thought the line should be drawn in teaching magic, if any.
Waiting for everyone to settle down in their seats, Caesar glanced over at one of the full length mirrors he had propped up against the wall, pleased to see that the previous blood shot pupils, circles under his hazel almond shaped eyes, and the lifeless character of his honeyed brown hair was all gone, his midnight spells and energizing potion proving successful. “As you know, these two terms we’ll be focusing on the practical applications of charm work in the most frequently occurring scenarios. For example,” There was an indiscernible twitch of his wand, and on several desks life sized mannequins of various appearance fell with hard thumps and convincing shrieks of pain emitting from their unmoving mouths. “Having to heal yourself, or another.” Each mannequin was damaged in some way; a few had broken noses, split lips, legs twisted at odd angles, fingers spread out further than what was normal, hanging limply from their tiny sockets, what looked like blood running from infected ears, and gashes across a thigh and a chest.
“The first spell I want you all to practice is Tergeo.” Caesar pronounced it, Tur - jee - oh. He repeated the spell, this time moving his wand in a half crescent shape, watching the blood on a mannequin clear away. “Point it wherever you see blood. You have to clean the wound before you can properly treat it.” He kept his wand pointed steady at the same mannequin, fixing on the nose that the blood had gushed from. “Episkey is the second spell I want you all to practice.” He repeated the spell Eh - pis - kee without wand movement, just holding his wand-arm steady. With an audible snap! the mannequin's nose fell back into place. Caesar waited for any questions to pop up while waving his wand and letting the mannequin be restored to its previous horrific grandeur, sprawled over a student’s desk.
“I couldn’t spring for dummies for each and every one of you, but I’m glad because when applying these skills in the real world, it will be important to know how to work as a team, in a team, and to split the necessary duties. Start when you’re ready. I will be walking around the class, correcting your form.” He walked through the classroom as his students partnered up, fingers running through the thick volume of hair he had, falling to pull idly at his earlobe. 'I'm a teacher... huh. Who saw this coming?'
Subthreads: May break my bones. by Marcus Williams (Pecari) with Sophie Jamison [Pecari]
Aren't nearly as useful as wands. by Fae Sinclair (Crotalus) with Madeline Parry, Teppenpaw, Fae
Falling dummies could definitely hurt me. by David Wilkes, Aladren with Regina Parker (Teppenaw)
...Are trees and boulders if they did all that. by Sam Bauer, Crotalus with Jordan Adair, Crotalus
Can be less cruel than words. Trust me. by Ryan O'Malley, Crotalus with Phoenix Lucore, Crotalus
Weakness and strength. by Autumn Collins, Crotalus with Eliza Bennett, Crotalus, Eliza
...Had better come nowhere near me by Arthur Carey, Aladren with Alice Adair, Crotalus, Arthur
Hey, this is great! by Arnold Carey, Aladren with Sara Raines, Pecari
Blood and Bones. by Russell Layne, Aladren with Hope Brockert, Teppenpaw
Life's going to have some rough patches. by Kate Bauer, Teppenpaw with James Owen, James
Don't you love finding posts you really wrote weeks ago? by Jane Carey, Teppenpaw
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Professor Light
Sticks and Stones {3-5}
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Professor Light
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David Wilkes, Aladren
November 27, 2011 3:34 PM
Falling dummies could definitely hurt me. by David Wilkes, Aladren
David didn’t think he was the most skittish guy in the history of ever, but nor was he a doctor, fireman, or high-wire walker, so when the dummies fell from the ceiling with their clattering and shrieks of pain and one of them landed squarely on his desk, he jumped a little, and pushed his chair away from the desk, though he almost immediately leaned back toward it to yank his notebook out from under the thing. What looked a lot like pus was running from the dummy’s ears, and while he knew the Scouring Charm as well as anyone else…Maybe it was just because he was a Muggleborn with a fastidious nurse of a mother, but somehow, he didn’t think that whatever he did would be enough for that thing to ever seem clean again if that stuff got on it, even if it probably wasn’t actually biological.Once he had the notebook, though, he left his chair where it had ended up when he pushed back and sat himself back in it, a small but firm distance between himself and the desk and what was on the desk. He was no more eager to be called sissy than the next guy, but that was just gross, and when needing to lay his notebook flat on his lap in order to take notes let him move his chair even further back a moment later, he took the excuse with nary a qualm.
One thing he could say about the new guy: he was determined not to be boring.
The thought of needing to use First-Aid charms wasn’t one David especially relished, especially after the snap of one dummy's nose going back into place made him almost feel a little ill for a second, but he had to admit it was practical. They did stuff in lessons all the time that could get somebody a little hurt, never mind in Quidditch, and it would be a lot easier than going to the hospital for every little break and sprain the way people had to in the Muggle world once he was out of here, though he guessed that depended on whether or not the charms could be performed by the person who was injured; he didn’t remember the professor saying anything about that, though it was possible he’d missed it. His attention tended to wander at unpredictable moments and then return without him remembering what had distracted him, or at least not noticing that he’d missed anything that wasn’t boring and useless.
When they were told to group up, he looked at his neighbors with a wry smile. “At least there’s not any guts,” he offered, thinking of the theme of a great many movies. Blood and bones here, yes, but no guts that he could see. “I’d ask if you wanted to work together, but I guess it’s more of a ‘will you’ question today.” Since if anyone actually wanted to stick their fingers in the wounds of the medical dummies, even if the someone was among the potential Healers in the class, he was going to be seriously, seriously disturbed by that. Just because some things were necessary to know or do did not mean people were supposed to enjoy them.
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David Wilkes, Aladren
Falling dummies could definitely hurt me.
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David Wilkes, Aladren
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Regina Parker (Teppenaw)
November 28, 2011 8:18 PM
Nah, you can just blast them away! by Regina Parker (Teppenaw)
Although Reggie couldn’t say for certain that Charms was her favorite class (that was, by far, Potions but she was a bit biased with all of that), but Charms did rank pretty high on her list. For one, her previous professor wore a pink hat. Pink wasn’t really her color, but she still thought it was quite awesome for a professor to wear such a thing at all. From her schooling in the past, the teachers had been rather stiff and overly professional. It had been nice to know that not all adults were like that in the education system.Not to say that a pink hat was the only thing that she had liked about the subject. Her dad was a Potions Master at the magical hospital in Nebraska, so growing up, Reggie spent a lot of time with the Healers and Medics that worked there. She had witnessed many charms happen that helped save lives of patients. Seeing such things changed a person. She never thought about going into the field herself, but she thought it was an amazing career and she loved Charms because of their capabilities.
Reggie waltzed into the classroom with a smile on her face. Although she hadn’t been sleeping well due to strange dreams and the sense of déjà vu that kept occurring to her, Reggie was still in a rather pleasant mood, all things considered. Taking a seat, she watched the professor with interest. He was still new and unknown to her, so she was trying to figure out what he was all about. So far, she can say without a doubt that his lessons were always entertaining.
Case and point, the screaming dummy landed in front of her and her desk mate. She jumped along with most of the rest of the class, but otherwise wasn’t perturbed by the scene in front of her. Maybe she was desensitized by all the movies she had seen or all the times she had spent in the hospital with her Dad. Or maybe she was just weird. She couldn’t say for sure, but the sight of the dummy actually excited her. She was taking in the dummy and trying to pay attention to the professor, but it was hard to do with the dummy screaming. Finally, they were left to do the spell castings for themselves.
Reggie smiled at David when he addressed her. “Guts would totally be awesome if they were included.” She said in all seriousness. “I mean, the broken leg and blood and stuff is pretty cool too, but guts and innerds are just way more better when it comes to bodies.” She was chatting probably in a way that wasn’t all that attractive, but she was being honest and that’s all she cared about. “I always love watching horror movies with all the blood and gore. This is like a tamed version of that, I think. Awesome lesson though.” Reggie rambled. “So, do you want to try fixing the liquid stuff or the solid breaks?”
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Regina Parker (Teppenaw)
Nah, you can just blast them away!
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Regina Parker (Teppenaw)
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David
November 30, 2011 5:00 PM
Fair point. Am I a wizard or not? by David
David listened to the girl beside him – one of the that group that had a lot of Teppenpaws, he thought; that was weirder than there also being, comparatively, a lot of Aladrens in the same year to him since all those Aladrens were dudes and most Aladrens seemed to be dudes, and there were more Teppenpaws than Aladrens even ignoring that – go on about how actually, she would have liked a bit more gore. At first, he just sort of raised an eyebrow in surprise, but by the end of her ramble on the topic he was smiling a little, his expression more admiring than anything. He liked people who weren’t what he expected; she was a Teppenpaw, a girl, and pretty, which usually didn’t equal cheerfully being okay with the idea of going to watch horror movies.“No chance of getting bored, anyway,” he said when she finished. “I wouldn’t dream of keeping you from the blood, so you can have that.” Plus, then he wasn’t dealing directly with the blood himself. Machiavelli might not have been impressed, nor the population of Crotalus House, but he thought it wasn’t half-bad. He noticed the form of what he’d said and, on a whim, threw in a little seated half-bow for good measure, gesturing toward the dummy as he did.
“I’m David, by the way,” he added, since he didn’t know if she’d be aware of that. He did not consider himself a very noticeable person, all things considered.
So that left him with Episkey. Funny work. It sounded like someone trying to write out a sneeze, or like some weird invention from Newton or Emerson or Physicton or one of those guys. Episkey. He thought it would be fun to say and gave it a shot. “Episkey,” he said to what looked like a broken finger, and flinched slightly when it snapped back into place, but it didn’t disturb him as much as it had the first time. He guessed it got easier. He also thought the Godfather theme ought to start playing at that thought, and made a mental note to go look in the library to see if he could find some kind of charm to make that kind of effect. That would be many kinds of cool, he thought.
Not that being able to fix stuff wasn’t. “Did he say if you could use this stuff on yourself?” he asked Reggie. Maybe she’d been paying attention at a moment when his mind had wandered off into the wild blue yonder for the wrong three seconds, and that still seemed like a good thing to know, even if he never played Quidditch again. A tiny part of him still liked the idea of being a magic knight he’d had in his head when he first arrived at Sonora as a Muggleborn who’d read way too many fantasy novels before school and had packed in more in the months after his letter than he had for a year before.
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David
Fair point. Am I a wizard or not?
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David
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Reggie
December 03, 2011 9:32 PM
The school says you are... by Reggie
Well, he was smiling at her that was a good sign. She hadn’t talked him into boredom or said something that was completely weird. Since she had mentioned movies and he hadn’t thought of her as strange, Reggie took that to mean he was either half blood or Muggleborn. She sometimes still forgot that there were others who hadn’t grown up in both worlds the way that she had. One would think that after being friends with Derry for so long, Reggie would think twice about the things she said in reference to the Muggle world, but her roommates had both been submersed in the Muggle world and thus, Reggie never considered others as just simply ‘Pure’.On top of that, she knew that sometimes she said oddball things. At the time of saying them, she didn’t think anything of it because they were normal phrases that were used around her household (even her grandparents shared these sayings), but the people she was around the most here at Sonora had long since accepted her weirdness. Not so much the people who weren’t ever around her. But, he was not looking at her with confusion or as if she were crazy, so Reggie took that to mean that she hadn’t said or done anything out of the ordinary. Reggie returned his smile with enthusiasm.
At his half bow, Reggie did a sitting curtsy, a similar move to the one she pulled with Derry during the opening feast. It was awkward, but the point of it was clear. “Thank you kind Sir.” Reggie said in a faux old English accent. Reggie twirled her wand as she flipped through the book until she found the spell she was looking for. She had been too distracted by the dummies to notice the wand movement. It was never good to have shrieking dummies in a class of thirteen year olds.
Looking up from the book, Reggie smiled again. She knew his name, but that was from role call in the dozen or so classes they had been in together since her first year. “I’m Reggie.” At this age, Reggie was finally noticing boys. If she were to ask Maddie or Jess what they thought of David, she was certain that they would agree with her in saying he was cute. Actually, now that she thought of it, she would ask them their opinions. Boys were not something that was ever brought up before but now she was curious to know their thoughts.
“He didn’t say it, I don’t think, but you can.” Reggie said, looking over the mannequin for a good spot to try the spell on. “My Popsicle works at the magical hospital near my home town. I’ve seen plenty of Healers use Episkey on patients.” Reggie was explaining, finding a good bleeder and focusing her attention on that, Reggie pointed her wand, “Tergeo!” She said, waving her wand in a half moon shape and then squealed when the blood spurted out of the nose and ears instead of stopping. “Finite! Finite, finite, finite!” Reggie cried out, trying to protect herself from the blood. “Sorry!” She said to David once the blood stopped it’s violent squirting, looking sheepish, she looked around trying to find something to wipe the mess with. “Did it get on you?”
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Reggie
The school says you are...
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Reggie
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David
December 05, 2011 12:16 AM
I could be a master of disguise. by David
David lacked much of an appreciation for gore, but he did have one for people who didn’t look at him like he’d fallen or had heavy things dropped on his head repeatedly as an infant instead of just that one time (and he had, unlike subsequent times when his sisters or his half-sister’s kids smacked him with something, done absolutely nothing to provoke it, having been peacefully asleep at the time) when he did things like start acting like something out of Sir Walter Scott because it was funny. He grinned easily at Reggie and her put-on accent.Reggie. Yeah, he was pretty sure he had heard that name before. Not on the roll in that form, but he doubted anyone was going to go to the effort to sneak into a Charms class illegally even if he hadn’t been sure he’d heard that name in class before, so that was cool. Though he was now curious about exactly what sort of person would go to all the effort of infiltrating Charms. Unless the professor was secretly an escaped criminal or something, and Interpol (or, as the case was since there would potions or Transfig or something to looking like a thirteen-year-old instead of a Man in a Suit, Magic Interpol) was after him….
Er, yeah, that was a little implausible even for a movie plot. He wasn’t sure that would work even if wizards could figure out how to have movies without blowing stuff up. Unless special effects guys were really all wizards, but come on, that was going a little way into the territory of the weird, not to mention illegal.
The question about self-use was answered and the tolerance for blood in front of her instead of just on screen was maybe explained. David nodded. “My mom’s a nurse,” he said. “She usually stuck me ‘n my sisters in an office, though, when we had to wait at work, she never let us see anything. Guess magic’s neater, though – like tidier, not like stitches.”
Pretty bad sentence, all things considered, but he didn’t worry too much about that, not least because there was suddenly stuff that looked like blood all over the place. He guessed, in retrospect, that as the older and wiser student who had a badge now to boot, he should have stepped in to stop it, but by the time this occurred to him and he lowered the hand he’d raised to his face, she had it back in hand.
He examined his sleeves, pleased to feel pretty sure, on examination, that it wasn’t really blood. No nasty diseases for him. “Nah, not too bad,” he said. “Scourgify.” That charm, he had learned pretty well. It felt weird, unpleasant, on his hands, but that was better anyway. He had not realized he was so antsy about fluids of a dubious nature touching him before this, and hoped it was a passing thing – well, in one way, not so he suddenly became an enthusiast about that kind of thing, this was a bad question. “Though now I wonder how much blood it has in it, or if you accidentally made it make more, or…” And this was the kind of wondering which had nearly led to the explosion of a pumpkin last year in Transfiguration, but eh, he and Samantha had gotten away with that. It might have helped that the pumpkin hadn’t actually exploded, but that didn’t occur to him too much at the moment as he speculated about how to figure out what had produced that effect there, which had only lacked a bit of good score music to make for a real good scary movie moment. Mannequins gushing blood to scare chords would have creeped him out in theaters, anyway, maybe more than actual people seeming to do so would have.
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David
I could be a master of disguise.
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David
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Reggie
December 08, 2011 9:45 PM
And me an evil villain? by Reggie
“A nurse?” Reggie asked, looking up from her work for a moment to look at him. “Very cool.” She said with a smile. Reggie had respect for those in the Health Care system. Actually, any sort of system where they were helping people. Reggie had no idea what it was that she planned on doing with her life, but she wanted it to be in something that would get her into helping people. Maybe not a Healer. Any one of those seemed a bit withdrawn or maybe disconnected. Her dad said it was because they had to deal with so much that it was easier on them to not have a real relationship with their patients. Watching movies, Reggie figured that was probably true in the Muggle hospital too. But a nurse, in both the Magical and Muggle world, were always so nice and willing to help. They were real heroes to Reggie.Her spell work had been awful and Reggie was slightly embarrassed by this knowledge. Normally, it wouldn’t have bothered her at all, but David was an older student who she thought was cute and he was easy to talk to. He now just witnessed her flub up her spell and in a really messy way. Her school robes had fake blood all over them and she was pretty sure she had some on her face and in her hair. She really looked like a gore freak now.
“Well, that was terrible. I’m sorry.” She said again even though he seemed totally cool with it. She didn’t know what her deal was. She wasn’t normally so flustered by this all. “I think the dummy may be filled a bit with the blood, but I think my spell also sort of caused it to increase and spit out.” Reggie joked. “This will take me forever to get out of my clothes and hair.” She commented more to herself than to him. “Too bad I don’t have a camera. I would totally take a picture of myself right now to send home to my dad. He’d get a huge kick out of this.” Reggie shook her head, amused with herself and then tried the spell one more time. This time, it seemed to work because she did the crescent moon instead of half a moon. “There we go.” She exclaimed, looking accomplished. “Maybe the professor will let me borrow a dummy and I can make a horror movie all my own staring the students of Sonora. Wouldn’t that be awesome?”
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Reggie
And me an evil villain?
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Reggie
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David
December 12, 2011 2:02 AM
Do you want to be an evil villain? by David
“I’ll tell her you said so,” David said with a half-grin when Reggie said Mom being a nurse was cool. He usually saw her at the end of the day, when she was tired and thoroughly sick of having to be accommodating to everyone and still had a bunch of housework to do and three kids and a husband to put up with, and he was pretty sure she’d like the thought of someone thinking she was cool.He thought she was…impressive. And a little scary sometimes. But then, he guessed that was how it went for someone who planned to survive in his family and was too stubborn to back down and be walked on, like his cousins’ wives. And he could not see his mother ever, in a million years, being like his cousins’ wives. His mother was kind to people like those poor girls, she was kind to everyone because that was just how she was unless someone wronged her on an epic scale, but she could never be like them. It was against the natural order for her to accept what she got and be okay with it.
“Maybe the spell will work on your clothes, too?” he hazarded a guess, since if he was her, he’d rather not walk back to the common room looking like he’d just come out of a slasher film. Just a personal preference, and hey, it couldn’t make things much worse at this point even if it didn’t work. It was always good to look at things and find that they did, in fact, have an upside, that was his motto. “Can’t come up with anything for getting a camera, though, sorry.” Well, except running somewhere and getting one, but he was pretty sure that the professor would give them a weird look and tell them to go sit back down if they tried to use that one as an excuse to get out of class.
David considered Reggie’s movie proposal. “Animate these things, get ‘em moving around some and all, and you’d probably have the summer blockbuster,” he admitted. “Just as long as I’m one of the people who either makes it or almost makes it, okay? I don’t wanna be the idiot who does something stupid and gets killed in the first fifteen minutes after they get stuck in whatever’s causing the horror.” He could at least appreciate almost making it, it felt like a commentary on something even if he wasn’t completely sure what that something might be off the top of his head, but dying in the first fifteen minutes was just silly. He could be kind of stupid about some things sometimes, but he’d like to think that he was smart enough to make it a little longer than that. Plus, nobody ever remembered who that first guy who got his head chopped off was, anyway. Making it almost to the end meant he’d probably been around long enough to make some kind of impression on the audience.
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David
Do you want to be an evil villain?
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David
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