It's better than destroying them. on Charms

Professor Olivers

November 01, 2012 9:24 PM

Mend Your Skills [I & II years] by Professor Olivers

The midterm had been much more relaxing than Florence had originally thought it would be. She had gone to visit her brother and his family in Chicago the week of Christmas. He had three kids, now grown and living on their own. It made Florence feel a little old, but she did feel younger when Max was going on and on about how old he felt. At least she would always be younger than him. When she saw her nephews and niece, who came for Christmas Day, Florence almost wished that she had had children with Terry. But she knew she wouldn’t have been able to handle any child of her own. She would have had to raise the child on her own too, and she knew that would have been a complete disaster. No, it was better that she was alone.

After the wonderful week of relaxation, she had to plan out lessons for the next term. Her solitary cottage was perfect for that, but it felt very empty. She missed the cold winter nights she had spent with her late husband Terrence back in Chicago. She didn’t miss the snow, however, or the cold much. It was very nice to see the sun every morning, but Arizona didn’t seem to get it right either. It was too hot and dry here. Otherwise it would have been a nice place to retire. At 47 years old, she knew it was a little early to start thinking about retirement, but she believed it was never too early to start planning for it.

Florence had only been here for a term, but already her classroom felt familiar. She liked Sonora a lot more than she had initially thought she would. She knew her students fairly well by face now, and, though she didn’t enjoy teaching the younger children as much, she did have a soft spot for them. Maybe teaching after the stage had been the right decision after all. She sat at her desk, thinking about her plans for the summer. Her second home was Italy, her birthplace, and almost every summer she had gone to visit her pureblood relatives there. But now that she lived in Arizona, it was going to be difficult to choose whether to stay in Chicago or Italy for the summer months. Still, that was a decision that didn’t have to be made right away, so she put it away for the time being.

Once all of her beginner students had come into the classroom, Florence closed the door with a wave of her hand and then stood up. Her purple robes were tidy and her hair neat and styled. She most certainly looked like a professional today, whether it was a professional actress or professor. “Welcome back, everyone. I hope you had a splendid vacation. But I know you all missed having Charms class.” She smiled teasingly, and then propped open her textbook.

“Since I know you all can’t wait to get started, open your textbooks to page 45. We’re going to be learning the Mending Charm. This will be very helpful once you are able to perform magic in your home. Even in your dorm rooms. It is an important charm to know, so everyone please pay attention.” She knew from experience that students usually paid closer attention to charms that they would use in everyday life. “At the front of the classroom in this box are empty glass bottles. Mending several pieces at once, however, is more difficult than focusing on mending just one crack or tear. That’s why everyone is going to first rip out a page of their textbook.”

Florence picked up her own textbook and promptly ripped out the page on the Mending Charm and showed it to her class with a smile. “Just like that.” As a teenager, Florence knew she would have felt liberated, ripping out pages and pages of textbooks that were supposed to be important. In school, textbooks had some sort of reverence surrounding them, which, now looking back, Florence found kind of funny. The beginners would probably feel strange ripping out pages of such a “sacred” text.

Once the ripping sounds had died down, she picked up her wand. “Now that that’s done, place the ripped page next to the rip as if you’re going to Spell-o tape it back together. The incantation is ‘Reparo.’ Let’s say it together: reh-PAH-roh. The wand movement is as such.” She flicked her wand at the chalk again and the piece of chalk drew the movement on the board, the shape like a backwards ‘G.’ Florence did the movement once and then looked over at her students to see if they were all paying attention. Then she waved her wand and said the incantation. In a jiffy, her page reattached itself to the binding and she held it up for the class to see. “Easy enough?” She put the book back on her desk.

“This is a fairly simple charm, so once you have successfully reattached your page, come see me for a glass bottle. With the glass bottle, you’re going to break it either on the floor or on your desk – please make sure the pieces don’t fly everywhere – and then you’re going to repair it. Once you have repaired it fully, you must bring the bottle back to me for inspection. If you need any help, come tell me. And with that, off you go.”

Today was the sort of day that Florence was going to have the children break social norms. Breaking glass and ripping pages out of textbooks was not what she called a conventional lesson plan, but it certainly was fun and slightly stress-relieving.

OOC: Ten sentences minimum, as always. Creative posts get more points! Once you finish repairing your page, you can go and collect a glass bottle. And if you repair it correctly, you can show it to Florence and assume you did well. If you did not repair it perfectly, then Florence would have said something like, “Nice try” or “Good effort.” Tag Florence in the subject line if you need any assistance!

Subthreads:

This is easy! by Wendy Canterbury - Pecari with Henry Carey, Crotalus, Wendy

I thought I was mending my book by Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren with Effie Arbon, Anthony

Mending, mending. by Bianca Stratford [Aladren] with Isabel Raines, Crotalus, Bianca

Striving to improve by Alan Raines, Teppenpaw with Rupert Princeton, Pecari

That's all I hear lately... by Amity Brockert, Aladren with Aubrielle Thornton, Teppenpaw

It's better than destroying them. by Melanie Lennox, Teppenpaw with Annabelle and Annette Pierce, Pecari

Ripping Books? Broken Glass? TAG: Prof. Olivers by McKinley Andrews, Crotalus with Professor Olivers, Kinley

0 Professor Olivers Mend Your Skills [I & II years] 0 Professor Olivers 1 5

Wendy Canterbury - Pecari

November 02, 2012 12:31 AM

This is easy! by Wendy Canterbury - Pecari

Charms class was not Care of Magical Creatures, but it was certainly high on Wendy's list. Learning how to use her wand was a lot of fun, but she wished she could remember all of the spells that they learned. So far she was loving Sonora. With the beginning of the new term, she wasn't feeling too homesick yet, and it definitely helped that Waverly was here with her.

Wendy walked into class and put her backpack down on her desk. She didn't usually bother taking anything out until the professor told them to. She was still trying to adjust to calling her teacher a "professor" too. It was a word she had always associated with colleges, but apparently there were professors at magical junior high and high schools too.

Today was the Mending Charm and Wendy got out her wand as usual. She was glad her professor didn't lecture too much. She loved doing practical lessons way more even though the essays sucked. Professor Olivers surprised her though when she told them to rip out a page in their textbook. Really? Wendy looked at her nice, neat book with its nice, crisp pages. She rubbed her hand across the sheet of clean paper and then, with a hesitant hand, ripped the page. Her fifth grade teacher would be shocked if she ever saw her do this.

Since she had hesitated a little, the page ripped very unevenly. Whoops. Hopefully this could be mended. Wendy could barely believe she would be able to fix a glass bottle with a whole bunch of pieces. She would definitely need help with that. She watched their professor perform the charm and mouthed the word, saying it under her breath once or twice. The charm didn't look too hard, but she hoped she wouldn't mess it up.

Then the professor told them to get started, and Wendy looked helplessly at her page. "I can do it," she muttered, and then put her loose page next to the rip. She looked at the board again, her mind immediately going loose to move the backwards G closer so she could pretend that it was right in front of her. She imagined she could trace it in the air like she was learning to write. So she pretended she was writing in the air before pointing her wand at the rip. "Reparo," she said, watching as the page came together and knit itself.

It was magic. This was better than watching bread dough rise or cakes bake in the oven. It was the beginning of her second term, but every time Wendy did magic, she couldn't help but be a little bit amazed by the power that she hadn't even known she'd possessed. She looked over at her partner, swelling with joy. "Look! I did it!" she said, smiling brightly. Her blonde hair fell a little into her face and she moved it behind one ear, still grinning. "I'm going to go get a bottle. Do you want one?"

0 Wendy Canterbury - Pecari This is easy! 0 Wendy Canterbury - Pecari 0 5

Henry Carey, Crotalus

November 03, 2012 2:07 PM

Speak for yourself by Henry Carey, Crotalus

Henry Carey was not, as even he had been forced at times to admit, the best in the world at hearing and interpreting tone of voice. It just wasn’t something that he found natural; what he heard, no one else seemed to, and when he tried to use that to figure out if an ambiguous statement was approving or disapproving of what he was going to, he was almost always wrong. All his life, he had been accused of reading things into situations that simply weren’t there, of having inadequate social skills, of thinking too much.

When his siblings were the ones saying it, he could safely assume they were wrong, if it wasn’t their own tones of voice they were talking about, but he had still learned just not to voice his opinions about things if he could help it. He preferred to state facts, solid, incontrovertible facts. If anyone disagreed with him then, he could be sure they were either misled or lying.

He still, though, found himself reading tones anyway, and frowned slightly when he concluded that Professor Olivers was not serious about them missing Charms class. He knew, in the abstract, that he was unusual for much preferring his comparatively quiet and often nearly solitary school life to the prospect of having potatoes spattered all over his glasses every day for two weeks straight and, even when he pulled up the nerve to risk family disapproval by locking himself in his bedroom with his library books, constantly having to listen to people running around and banging on doors and trying to get him to play with them, but he would have appreciated it if the staff, at least, had seemed to share his enthusiasm for the classroom.

Without further complaint, though, he opened his textbook to the Mending Charm, then looked up again, scandalized, when Professor Olivers said they should tear a page out of their textbooks. He had reconciled himself to owning secondhand books, since they were in good condition and he could easily hide that some of them had girls’ names written inside the covers, but purposely damaging something? That was – that was against his code, that was a Brandon sort of thing to do, breaking something just to break it. However, it was against his code to disobey instructions, too.

Henry bit his lower lip, then switched to biting the inside of his mouth before finally, carefully, reluctantly, turning to the very end of his book and picking one of the blank sheets with nothing on it that always seemed to be at the end of books. With great care, his head close to the page so he could squint hard at what he was doing over his glasses, he very slowly removed the last one, pausing any time the page started to tear away from its straight line and correcting it before he went on.

Because of this, he was one of the last people in the room to finish his tearing, he was sure, but he only felt mildly upset about damaging a book at all, where he was sure he would have felt much worse if he’d hurried the job and messed it up so badly that, if he could not manage the charm, it would be obvious to anyone who looked at his book that a page had been torn out of it and that he hadn’t been able to replace the whole book because of this defect. It was far better to be slow.

He bit his lip again as everyone started working, peering intently, again, at his book, as though hoping it would repair itself, before raising his wand. “Reparo,” he said.

The page fluttered, and the little uneven parts near the top waved together as though they wanted to reunite, but the fluttering threw the whole thing off-course, and the page drifted away from its position near the spine of the book, making progress impossible. Henry pressed his fingers into the bridge of his glasses, making it dig into his nose painfully, and then sat up straighter to try again, just as the girl next to him – Wendy Canterbury, his mind helpfully filled in, sister in Theresa’s year, he thought, they all used the same initials like Uncle Anthony and Aunt Lorraine had, not like his parents had chosen to do with all of them, thank Merlin, Honey’s roommate – began to exult over her own success with the charm.

No, he thought, but he bit the inside of his mouth again. Polite. “If you want,” he said. “If you don’t mind. I’ll need it in a minute.” He could tell he was flushing, defensive, over his failure to succeed right away, too, but there was nothing he could do about that except look away and try again.

0 Henry Carey, Crotalus Speak for yourself 0 Henry Carey, Crotalus 0 5

Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren

November 03, 2012 3:22 PM

I thought I was mending my book by Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren

The Christmas holidays, for Anthony, had passed in a blur of wrapping paper and books and Floo flames and, on one occasion, a game his mother had made up off the top of her head in the dining room, which had been meant to try to get the twins to stop being disagreeable and had had the pleasant side effect of smashing that ugly vase Grandmother had given her for Christmas three years ago. No one had been sorry to see that go into the cupboard “for safe keeping” after it was repaired; he had even gotten a laugh out of Henry, who had been gloomier than usual over the holidays, when he told him the story about it, though that might not have had much to do with the appearance of the vase.

Whether it did or not, though, Anthony had enjoyed being home with his family again, enough that he had been a little reluctant to get on the wagon back to Sonora when the time came in January. Insouciance was the norm for him, though, so by the end of the Returning Feast, he had already mostly forgotten about his reluctance to finish packing that morning, and though he wasn’t enthusiastic about returning to Charms, neither was he against the idea. If nothing else, his lessons here were usually much more active than his ones at home, and that recommended them well, since he was twelve years old and as full of energy as that usually implied.

He started to laugh at Professor Olivers’ joke about how much they had all missed the class, then made himself stop, since maybe she was being sincere – he could certainly see Arthur missing classes, and Henry had complained more than once over the holidays about how much he missed his dorm room, so it wasn’t outside the realm of possibility. He settled for smiling good-naturedly as she told them where to open to in their books, and when he got to the spell they were going to use, he forgot about worrying if he had made a faux pas, because the charm had caught his attention.

The mending charm…well, that was useful. Anthony’s favorite times in class were when they were learning things which just seemed fun to know, or had the potential to let them run around in class, but he definitely didn’t mind when they learned the useful things, not least because those were the ones his parents showed the most interest in. He could use this. It would be great on those occasions when he broke something when it wasn’t family-sanctioned, which had also, regrettably, happened over the winter once or twice, and didn’t want anyone to know he had been in a position to do that instead of studying, as he was most likely supposed to have been doing at the time. With just Mother and Father, it wasn’t so bad if things like that happened, but Grandfather had been present the second time, and he had been visibly disapproving and asked Anthony why he wasn’t reviewing something instead of roaming around the house.

He laughed again when they were told to rip pages out of their textbook and pulled out the one opposite the Mending Charm without a second thought after he decided not to actually rip out the page the spell they were using was on. He did, though, frown when he saw that the now loose page had crinkled around where his fingers had been, and tried to smooth out that damage as others in the class kept ripping their pages loose.

He wasn’t completely successful, but since it was still less of a disaster than when he’d spilled hot chocolate all over his Transfiguration book not long before exams before Christmas, he didn’t worry about it much as he listened to the charm, then attempted it on his own book: “Reparo!”

About half the page reattached, all of it at the top and bottom, rather than in the middle, which was what he would have expected. He shrugged, though, and looked at his neighbor. “It’s a start,” he said. “This is so much easier than it all was at the beginning of the year, isn’t it?”

0 Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren I thought I was mending my book 0 Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren 0 5

Effie Arbon

November 05, 2012 1:25 PM

I think you better had by Effie Arbon

Effie entered the Charms classroom in a less than elated mood. She had formed her impressions of their charms professor the previous term and they were not particularly positive. The woman's background in a degrading profession had not endeared her to the first year, and the woman had a tendency, probably born of her previous career, to whirl about in a giddy fashion as if everything was a tremendous joke. Her mood, however, was somewhat improved when she noticed a vacant seat next to Anthony Carey. Had she been familiar with Muggle idioms and transportation, she might have ryely mused that Careys were like buses – you waited a whole term for one and then two came along at once. The classroom was filling up, and so she did not think it seemed too obvious or presumptuous to slip into the seat beside him. Before she'd had a chance to do so much as smile at him, the lesson began. Effie did not find their professor amusing and was determined not to laugh at her pathetic attempts at humour until she heard Anthony Carey laughing. She did not want him to think her sour and humourless, and so she gave a gentle little titter, cutting it short when he abruptly stopped laughing.

The lesson plan did not fill her with an abundance of joy. Firstly, she was incredibly hesitant about ripping a page from her book, although next to her Anthony Carey was doing this with abandon, and he was an Aladren! The social pressure to be the same, or at least the equivalent as their genders were bound to create some behavioural differences, was not, on this occasion, enough to push her over the edge, as it had been with laughing at Professor Olivers' jokes. It was not as if they could not easily afford to replace any possessions that had been damaged but that did not mean that one should not treat them with care and respect. She was quite positive that her father would be exceptionally displeased by such behaviour on her part and the threat of an absent parent's anger was still the greater fear, even when compared to making a poor first impression on a Carey. Her spirits were further dampened by the idea that, after they had attempted this task, the class, which included crass and clumsy people, would begin smashing glass all over the place. It was all part of the ridiculous Professor Olivers whirlwind. Effie was unsure whether the woman was trying desperately hard to seem spontaneous and “fun” or whether she was genuinely mentally unhinged but either way resulted in the outcome of them undertaking ludicrous, and in this case dangerous, charades in order to practise what should have been very simple spells.

As the class began, Effie drew a blank piece of parchment from her bag, ripping this in twain, instead of her book. She traced the wand movement through the air, although she was already somewhat familiar with it – it never hurt to refresh one's memory and think through before working.

“Reparo!” she cast over the piece of parchment. The two halves whizzed together, creating an ugly and prominent seam where they had rejoined. It was the same as the effect of two tectonic plates crashing together and forming a mountain range, though on a much, much smaller scale. Effie replayed her attempt in her head. She was sure she had got the wand movement and the spell right, and had synchronised them well with each other. In fact, the result appeared as if the spell had been too effective. She supposed that came from feeling frustrated and angry. When combined with her reasonable competency at the spell, it had resulted in an overly forceful attempt.

She turned, jumping only ever so slightly, when Anthony Carey spoke. Initially, she thought he was passing judgement on her work – which, whilst he had the right to do so, seemed a little brazen – until she caught sight of his half reattached page.

“Good day, Mr. Carey,” she smiled, giving him a seated version of a curtsey. Although he had launched straight into conversation, she felt the need to mark the start of it a little more definitely. He was an heir, after all. “A very good start,” she added in reference to his work, her eyes briefly flickering to her own work. It evidenced a loss of self-control which she was mortified for him to see. His second comment was not harder to reply to although she felt it meant bending the truth slightly. She had had a thorough introduction to Charms at home, including some practical work, and thus had never found the class very difficult. “Oh yes. As they say, practise makes perfect,” she smiled.

13 Effie Arbon I think you better had 238 Effie Arbon 0 5

Bianca Stratford [Aladren]

November 07, 2012 8:00 PM

Mending, mending. by Bianca Stratford [Aladren]

Bianca had spent most of her first year being wary of everyone around her. The little Stratford couldn’t really come to peace with being around so many strange people at the same time, but she was finally beginning to feel a tad bit more comfortable with her roommates. The fact that Preston was in her house had helped the matter since she knew there was someone she knew near her. For everything that her older brother was, he was sure nice to her, more so than Victor, but maybe that was because they were more or less in the same age gap. Not really, but nearer than their older brother.

The brunette had come to rely to some extent on her room mates, Amity and Clarissa were nice, but she still needed some more time to feel completely comfortable with them. Thankfully, Preston had been helping her with adjusting to her new life. Bianca didn’t feel like going back home and be homeschooled anymore. She was proud of herself for growing up so much in so little time.

The midterm had been pretty eventful for her family, but it had been a nice respite from the chaos that school could be. It was hard to compare, because the wedding had been an once-in-a-lifetime event and school would be there for the next six years. It had been different kinds of chaos, but home life was still safer than school.

Bianca had been very happy to see Victor so happy. Her oldest brother had gotten married to Shelby. The little Aladren had been used to the new Mrs. Stratford for quite some time now, and she liked her. The older girl had been nice and sweet to her. Shelby made Victor happy, and Bianca was happy because of that. She liked Victor a lot. He usually spoiled her with treats.

Everything had gone splendidly and now she was back at school. The holidays had been relaxing after the big wedding had happened. She, of course, had been sent to bed after dinner because she wasn’t old enough yet. She hadn’t minded that at all, if she was honest, but she had been curious to see why she wasn’t allowed. She often wondered what adults did in their spare time. Bianca had always been a curious little thing.

Charms was one of her favorite classes and it was time for it. The Aladren happily entered the classroom and waved to Professor Florence before taking her seat in the front of the classroom. Bianca liked having a first-row seat to her classes. She diligently took out everything she would need for it and patiently waited for the class to begin. There were still a few more minutes until the class started. She liked being early to class.

The class finally started and a grin formed on her features. Bianca was taking notes, but had to do a double take when she heard what she had to do. Rip a page of her book? But…but…her book was in so perfect condition! She sighed loudly but did it with a heavy heart. It was class work, after all. The ripping sound of the page felt like a paper cut to the little Aladren. If her soul could bleed she would probably be red from it.

Bianca followed the instructions to perfection. She placed the ripped page alongside the rip on the book, muttered the charm and even did the wand movement a couple of times. She watched closely as the Professor did it. She emulated everything she had seen, but when she tried the charm the page didn’t reattached fully. The Aladren pouted, “What did I do wrong?” she asked to no one in particular.

0 Bianca Stratford [Aladren] Mending, mending. 0 Bianca Stratford [Aladren] 0 5

Isabel Raines, Crotalus

November 08, 2012 10:30 AM

Also mending by Isabel Raines, Crotalus

For Isabel, the end of the holidays and the return to school had meant an almost immediate return to feeling just a little anxious, though she tried not to think about it too much. She knew that if she dwelled on the two examples of being a Sonora girl which had been held up before her for as long as she could remember, she would go crazy trying to be Sara and not Catherine, especially since she thought, after a few months of classes and getting through the social world and everything, that she might just fall into the middle ground between them and be doomed to stay there forever.

It could, she knew, have been worse. She could have been like Catherine – not very good at her lessons, in a dorm with too many people of the wrong kind, friends with people who were going to end up becoming complete scandals before they all left school – and then not had the good luck her sister had when it came to marriage, as it was sure that she wouldn’t have if those other things had happened, since her sister was older and poised to inherit much more than she did, some very distant day in the future. There was always that to think about. But she still felt bad about not being as close to perfect as Sara. Her cousin, unlike her sister, was held up as a completely positive role model, and Isabel guessed feeling disappointed about not living up to that standard had been inevitable. She wasn’t bad at anything, but nor did she feel that she shone here. She was pretty, pleasant, and competent, not beautiful, sparkling, and brilliant. That was just how it was.

“Hello, Professor Olivers,” she said as she came in, with a smile, and then found a seat and tried not to fidget with her things as the rest of the class arrived. That wasn’t ladylike, but she was nervous, almost as though they were starting over again from scratch, instead of just picking up where they had left off before the holidays.

The mending charm sounded like a very good thing to learn – she could just imagine how many things could be quickly fixed without any fuss, without anyone even noticing that something had gone wrong, and Mamma and Catherine both agreed that while the ideal was for things to just not go wrong, most people never met that, so the best goal was to hope that she could always cover it up when something did – but she winced when they were told to rip pages out of their books and ultimately lost her nerve when it came to hers, so only half of it was loosed from its spine.

Maybe, once she was sure she could do it right, it would be okay, but until then, she didn’t think she could make herself just mess something up. Her whole life, she had been told to be careful, not to tear or break things; it was a lot of conditioning to get past.

“Reparo,” she said, and watched as about an inch and a half, of maybe three she had torn loose, fastened itself back into the book. She ran her fingers over it, and it seemed as sound as new, though she found then that she didn’t quite have the nerve, either, to tug on it too hard to see.

She glanced over at her neighbor’s work when she asked what she had done wrong and guessed from it that Bianca Stratford had done about as well as she had with it. "Maybe you just need a little more practice," she suggested.

0 Isabel Raines, Crotalus Also mending 0 Isabel Raines, Crotalus 0 5

Alan Raines, Teppenpaw

November 08, 2012 12:31 PM

Striving to improve by Alan Raines, Teppenpaw

Being at home hadn’t been bad, but Alan was glad to be back at school. After a few months here, life there seemed to him to be much too slow and predictable and uninteresting – all words he would rarely, if ever, apply to the Sonora experience, where it often felt as though he couldn’t go a day without having to deal with some new situation. Not all of them were things he would have necessarily chosen to deal with, that was true, but they were always new.

Some of the appeal of classes, admittedly, had worn off since he was now good enough with his wand for every correct charm not to feel like quite as much of a victory, but he was still interested in them and greeting Professor Olivers cheerfully as he reentered the Charms classroom after his holiday break from it. All in all, he liked Charms, since it was a useful subject and the accidents and missteps could be interesting and he was not half-bad at it, and while he wasn’t sure yet what to make of having a former actress for a teacher, his parents had seemed convinced he’d learned at least as much as he should have in half a year, so he saw no reason not to be pleasant to the teacher.

Of course, he knew what his father would say – that not liking or respecting an authority figure was no excuse for being unpleasant anyway, that life was mostly about dealing with people one would rather not, and so on. Alan knew all that from times when he had complained about a tutor he didn’t like before. Luckily, though, Sonora hadn’t presented him with that problem. He got along with all of his teachers well enough to not have to be indignant about that particular alleged fact of life.

He flipped with the rest of the class to the page with the mending charm on it in his textbook, then raised an eyebrow when Professor Olivers instructed them to rip out a page of it to practice the charm on. Even a cursory glance around at his classmates showed that quite a few of them seemed reluctant to follow the instruction, and Alan himself wasn’t thrilled with it, since he’d never thought of himself as much of a destructive personality, but he did it anyway, removing a page with two pulls and looking at the jagged edges, wondering if it wouldn’t have been easier for him if he’d torn it less evenly, so he could see where he was trying to put it together more easily.

He wasn’t going to tear out another page just to test that, though, so he fitted the one he had just taken out back as well as he could and then took out his wand. “Reparo.” he incanted, and watched as the paper began to meld back together with the stitching.

When he smoothed it out to check his work, though, there were still loose places, and one of the places which had reattached properly came away again just from that pressure. It still needed some work. “Reparo,” he tried again, and got it better this time. He still repeated the charm again to make sure it was not only done, but well-done, and noticed the person next to him looking in his direction. “I’m still hoping for the day when I can get something in one try,” he said lightly. “How are you doing? Glad to be back?” Since this charm wasn’t the most interesting subject for conversation ever, he thought, and would be exhausted easily.

0 Alan Raines, Teppenpaw Striving to improve 0 Alan Raines, Teppenpaw 0 5

Rupert Princeton, Pecari

November 09, 2012 10:30 AM

How's that going for you? by Rupert Princeton, Pecari

A couple weeks at home had been much too long in Rupert's opinion. He had been more than peeved at his family's blatant favouritism towards Cepheus and Leo, and Rupert, the unfortunate middle child who didn't usually take those favouritisms to heart, had to be satisfied with the thought of coming back to Sonora. Being left behind at home all the time while his brothers went out on trips to London had become less hurtful now, though Rupert had usually tried to make up for all those feelings by being as outlandishly ridiculous as possible at home. That was probably why he wasn't allowed off the grounds of the estate.

But he was back at Sonora now and happier than ever. He loved school and he had never loved learning before. He felt free, though he did sometimes felt the watchful eyes of his older brother on him. Rupert greeted the Charms professor cheerfully. He liked most of the professors here to an extent. They were all much better than the old, stuffy tutors he'd had back home.

The mending charm would be convenient to know in case he accidentally broke things. Now he'd be able to fix them with a swish of his wand like his mum. Rupert's appreciation for their actress-turned-professor rose when she told them to rip out a page in their textbook. He did so with flourish, having to mentally stop himself from ripping out tons of them. Now the time came to repair it, and Rupert looked at the rip and the separated page. He tried to put them as close together as possible, and then did the spell as directed and said, "Reparo."

The page came together nicely, but only the middle part. The edges of the page were still separated, and he administered the charm to both the top and bottom of the page. Then it was complete.

Rupert smiled, glad that his work was done for now, and looked over to see how his desk-mate was doing. He and Alan had played an informal Quidditch match during their first flying lesson here, and Rupert wanted it to happen again sometime. He wanted to get to know his fellow first-year boys. Being surrounded by girls was not Rupert's first choice, even if they were sometimes nicer than the guys.

"Good work, mate," said Rupert when Alan looked up. "I'm hoping for the same, but it's been done." He waved his hand over his book to bring attention to it, and then smiled at Alan. "I'm definitely glad to be back. I'm even happy to be in Charms class." Maybe he could say that he really had missed Charms class as Professor Olivers had been insinuating. "I'm going to get a bottle. Would you like me to get you one?"

Rupert went and got the bottle after Alan indicated his choice, and came back, ready to be slightly more destructive. "How was your holiday?" he asked, trying to find a not-so messy way of smashing his bottle into bits. Bits would be loads more difficult to repair than large, broken pieces.

0 Rupert Princeton, Pecari How's that going for you? 0 Rupert Princeton, Pecari 0 5

Amity Brockert, Aladren

November 09, 2012 3:11 PM

That's all I hear lately... by Amity Brockert, Aladren

After a midterm that was full of work instead of relaxing, Amity was extremely glad to be back at Sonora where she had to do what she wanted to do. To a certain extent, she didn't even mind her classes. At least they were things she'd actually need whereas she would never need the things her mother wanted her to do and when her homework was done-she wasn't going to just not do it-or even before, she could do whatever she wanted, which ended up being mostly reading. Pretty much almost everything else a person could do that was available the fun had been taken out of. Amity wished that Sonora had like, a game room or something rather than rooms where people could improve skills. She was sick of doing that.

Now, though, she was back to sweet sweet freedom. Weekly essays in Charms paled in comparison to all her mother tried to cram into Midterm. It was as if she was forcing Amity to make up for lost time or something. In fact, it was pretty much that exactly. The Aladren had spent half of midterm fighting with Mother, being yelled at and berated for how rusty her skills were. The thing was, it had pretty much no affect on her. Which made Mother even angrier at her.

Of course, her tutors had been more demanding, which Amity figured meant Mother had told them to be tougher on her, not to mention they were likely personally annoyed at her for not keeping up with things. Mother would never hire someone who was understanding . No, of course, she hired people who thought whatever they taught was the most necessary, important thing in life, like Mother did. Except, Mother thought that all the things they taught were that. Honestly, Amity didn't see how her tutors and Mother could get on, given that she was certain all of them wanted her to devote her full attention to their particular thing and couldn't be possibly happy that Mother wanted her to do other things that she had to give everything to.

Professor Olivers began to speak and Amity rolled her eyes a bit at the part about how the professor was sure they missed Charms and that they couldn't wait to get started. Honestly, the Aladren hadn't missed classes themselves one bit, she'd just missed that she had less to do here despite them. If the professor was joking,which she likely was, it was rather a lame one. Still, Amity was sort of glad she wasn't serious. She'd had enough of people who thought their particular subject was the be all end all.

The lesson, however, seemed a good one. Even though the first year could easily buy something new if something got ripped or broken, it would be so much easier and quicker to mend it. And Amity liked for things to be easy.

She was not too taken aback when she was told to rip a page out of her textbook, which a quick glance around told her she seemed to be in the minority about. It wasn't as if the Aladren was being told to destroy a book that didn't belong to her or that books felt actual pain. She was to destroy-and fix-a book that to her, if anything, meant more blasted work . Amity felt just slightly bad for the professor actually, whom she was sure thought this would be a great liberating experience for all, which was certainly how she saw it and yet, people were acting like they were being asked to pull the teeth out of a beloved pet.

With a smile on her face, and a bit of flourish, Amity ripped a page out of her textbook. It did feel good. She briefly visualized going on real destructive spree, tearing apart sheet music and books on foreign languages, her mother's horrified expression. It would be immensely satisfying.

Amity did as instructed, placing the torn page back next to the rip. She managed to tear it clear through the instructions. "Reparo". Half of it seemed to have reattached but not all of it. She wasn't sure whether or not she should be satisfied enough to strike up a conversation with the person next to her, or annoyed that she'd have to put forth more effort.

Before Amity could decide though, the person next to her began to speak.

11 Amity Brockert, Aladren That's all I hear lately... 233 Amity Brockert, Aladren 0 5

Bianca

November 10, 2012 8:39 PM

Yey mending! by Bianca

Bianca looked to see Isabel Raines offering her an explanation of what had happened. She definitely needed to practice more, but the knowledge that her beautiful charm book had been defiled like that was giving the slight girl a mild headache. Bianca liked his things nice and pristine. Order had always been part of her life and the idea of the ripped page was bugging her more than a tad bit. The girl had been raised with a tight schedule of classes, and she had to have her room in order. The House-elves weren’t allowed to tidy it for her; she needed to do it herself. Her mother even inspected every day at the same time.

The Aladren was more or less comfortable with Isabel, especially because Preston had instructed her to be nice to anyone with the last name Raines. Bianca had concluded that since Sara was nice and all, her relatives wouldn’t be awful. Besides, she actually didn’t have any choice in the matter. The Raines family was important to her family. Through their minimal contact Bianca had decided that Isabel was okay.

The brown-haired girl gave the other girl a half-smile, “I shouldn’t have ripped the whole page off.” The Aladren slumper her shoulders and did her best not to pout in annoyance. It wouldn’t be fitting for a girl with her last name to show such horrifying behavior. She just needed to try again and practice during her study time, though next time she wouldn’t be ripping a book, maybe a piece of unused parchment. “I should have done what you did,” she said with a grimace. Isabel had actually thought things through. It was a bit arrogant to think she would be able to do it the first time, even when charms was her best subject.

Bianca looked down at the imperfect book again and wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I should try it again,” she told Isabel with determination. The rip was just bugging her too much, and Bianca didn’t want to ask for help. She had messed up, and she needed to make it right.

0 Bianca Yey mending! 0 Bianca 0 5

Isabel

November 14, 2012 11:48 PM

It's better than ripping, anyway by Isabel

Isabel felt her own posture trying to correct itself a little at the sight of Bianca’s slump, remembering all too well the constant exhortations of her dance and etiquette tutors about not letting herself do that. She did sometimes anyway, even after all that. She had always been carefully instructed about what was proper and what was not, and she had never managed to live up to it all anyway. It was one of the reasons she sometimes wished she’d been born a boy, though perhaps not as Alan; from what she’d heard, it was nearly as difficult to be Sara’s brother as it was to be a female relative in general who was just close enough to her age to be compared to her a lot.

She didn’t really know him at all, having only ever seen him at a distance and heard Alan complain about him, but Isabel didn’t think that Bianca Stratford seemed very much like her famous brother, even though they were in the same House. She wasn’t sure, either, if that was a very good or a very bad or a very neutral thing, but she thought she preferred it. It was stressful for her, thinking of people in terms of their families, and knowing they were thinking of hers; the less they all seemed exactly like each other, the easier it was not to worry about that.

“Professor Olivers probably wouldn’t agree,” Isabel admitted when Bianca said she should have done what Isabel did. “I just lost my nerve.” She made a face. “I mean, Papa would send me another one, I’m sure, but then I’d get lectured twice, so….”

She blushed a little and bit her tongue before she could continue to ramble on and, most likely, make a poor impression of herself and not end up even making sense from that point of view, either. She knew what she was thinking, but it was kind of coming out a little garbled. With their very similar hair – except for the infernal cowlick nothing she did could completely remove, and which she just had to cover up as best she could with her hair ribbon instead – and almost identical eyes, Isabel knew she looked more like Sara’s sister than Alan did Sara’s brother, but she was sure that was as far as a positive comparison would ever go.

“That’s a good idea,” she encouraged Bianca when the Aladren said she was going to try again. “I should, too,” she added, reluctantly pulling her page loose again. As she feared, it came away more easily than it should have, and that meant the extra force it hadn’t needed turned into a lower part also coming away, jaggedly, making her wince. “That wouldn’t do for one of those bottles,” she added, trying to make light of it. “Reparo!” Once again, it went together, but, she suspected, imperfectly. “Did you, um, have a nice holiday?” she asked Bianca, not wanting to be rude and just start ignoring her now that she'd spoken about that.

0 Isabel It's better than ripping, anyway 0 Isabel 0 5

Bianca

November 17, 2012 10:02 PM

I agree with that by Bianca

Watching Isabel made Bianca realize she was slumping. She blushed embarrassed about her lack of propriety. The Aladren was sure her mother and etiquette tutor would admonish her for what she had done. It was impossible to count the times she had been lectured about how a lady presented herself to society and her peers, and how someone her station couldn’t fail in presenting a good front. Mistakes weren’t something permitted in her line of “work”, since everything she did reflected on her whole family.

“Well, I don’t necessarily agree with this lesson,” she responded with a tinge of nervousness and angriness about failing something she was usually good at. Bianca blushed again by the boldness of her last statement. The brown-haired Aladren felt out of place right now. She was being an embarrassment to her family in front of the cousin of Preston’s prefect girlfriend. Thankfully, Bianca didn’t have Sara as a direct competition, but she actually pitied everyone that did. Sara was perfect in every sense of the word. She had never seen her do anything inappropriate or embarrassing. It was just her luck. Having two sisters-in-law that were the epitome of what a lady should be. The future for Bianca didn’t look too bright. Forever shadowed by them.

The Aladren looked at her own book after Isabel ripped the page again. She felt like her book was taunting her mercilessly with that awful rip. “My holidays were rather nice,” she said while studying the rip on her book page. “Victor got married to Shelby, everything went accordingly to plan and Christmas was nice and quiet,” she answered as fully as she could. Isabel was practically a stranger and telling her something more detailed was inexcusable. It wasn’t personal, but maybe by next term they would be better friends and be able to share more things than right now.

A tendril of brown hair got loose from its place and began teasing her nose until Bianca sneezed. “I saw your cousin at my brother’s wedding. She was with Preston,” she commented before ripping out the page that had been so cruelly tortured. The girl scratched her nose, “How was your time back at home?” she asked in return to continue with the conversation while she concentrated on the charm they had to practice.

0 Bianca I agree with that 0 Bianca 0 5

Melanie Lennox, Teppenpaw

November 22, 2012 1:57 AM

It's better than destroying them. by Melanie Lennox, Teppenpaw

As usual, Melanie was worried. Over midterm, her sister had gotten betrothed . The Teppenpaw wanted to be happy for Valerie, because being betrothed was supposed to be a wonderful occasion, a step on a young girl's journey to womanhood and a sign of security, that she'd be taken care of as an adult and if anyone needed someone to do that it was Valerie. Plus, it was great that the fourth year's medical problems hadn't prevented her from doing something that normal pureblood girls did.

The thing was that though Valerie had been betrothed to a boy in her class,Jasper Malone, he wasn't someone she knew well. Or at all actually. He seemed to be a quiet boy, not very sociable, which Melanie thought was a good thing in and of itself, someone too outgoing would overwhelm Valerie. However, the problem was that he hadn't actually approached her sister. And the Crotalus wasn't about to approach him, she was too nervous. Which, of course, was not good for her health.

It annoyed Melanie. Jasper should just be a man about it. He and Valerie were going to be together for a hundred years-she had to believe that-and they needed to get to know each other. The Teppenpaw did not want her sister to have an unhappy marriage with someone who ignored her.

Of course, maybe Jasper was just as shy and anxious as Valerie was. She would normally hate to see pressure put on someone like that and especially to do it herself. It was just that when it came to her sister, Melanie had a tendency to put the older girl and her feelings-and her health -first. She couldn't stand anyone not treating her sister right and she tended not to be very understanding when they didn't. Especially given that Valerie was extremely stressed out and not feeling that good and Melanie hated that.

Another thought that had not failed to show itself was that, well, she would probably be betrothed before too long herself and the thought made Melanie a bit giggly as her eyes fell on one of her male classmates. That was a much nicer thing to think about than worrying about whether or not Jasper would treat Valerie well and whether or not Valerie would make herself sick with her own worrying about it.

Right now, though, Melanie knew that she should focus on the Charms lesson. It didn't thrill her. She knew that there was a purpose to what they were learning, that mending things would come in handy. Especially when she grew up, if she had little boys who bounced around and got into things and broke them. She'd heard they were more apt to do that than girls were.

She, on the other hand, had been raised in a house where they had to be careful not to break anything. Not because her parents would get mad about their things being ruined-Melanie gave her mother credit in this area if no other-but because they could get hurt and if Valerie got cut, it could likely get infected and they didn't want that.

The Teppenpaw thought she could handle the book, even though she did like reading. The broken glass however, made Melanie nervous, even though she wasn't too worried about getting an infection herself if she were cut. It would still bleed and be painful. And Melanie didn't really like blood. It was probably a good thing that she'd never be allowed to be a Healer. She didn't know if she would have been able to handle that aspect of it. The second year just wished she could do something to help people with immune deficiencies like Valerie's but she never would. She'd never be able to do anything but comfort her sister when she was sick or donate large sums of money to the cause.

As usual, before beginning the actual spell, Melanie prepared by perfecting the wand motion and spell pronunciation. Then she went to the front of her text book and ripped out the title page, placing it back next to the tear. "Reparo" The page was quickly mended and Melanie frowned. Normally it was good to take to something so quickly and she often did, but right now, she was really in no hurry to break one of the bottles. The Teppenpaw didn't know how to keep all the pieces from flying everywhere and didn't want to take a chance on hurting herself or anyone else.

Melanie would just have to practice this spell a few times before she tried the bottle. Make sure she got it right enough that she felt she could take on the bottle. With that she ripped the title page out again. However, before she could work on repairing it a second time, she caught the eye of the person next to her and gave them a friendly smile. "How are you doing?"

11 Melanie Lennox, Teppenpaw It's better than destroying them. 226 Melanie Lennox, Teppenpaw 0 5

McKinley Andrews, Crotalus

November 22, 2012 2:57 PM

Ripping Books? Broken Glass? TAG: Prof. Olivers by McKinley Andrews, Crotalus

McKinley had tried hard not to freak out when spending the night in tents for the bonfire (and the bonfire itself) was mentioned. It worked, she thought. At least she hoped it had!

Now removed from the situation, she decided she was alright and nothing could make her dirty if she didn’t want it to, sort of how she managed it on the wagon ride back to school. If I have to, I can wear the plastic again, that’s all… she thought as she walked into Charms class. She sat down in her seat, looked around for Carter, and spotting him, she waved before pulling out her notebook. She loved her cousin, but she didn’t always have to sit next to him.

The rest of the class came into the room too and the professor closed the door and stood up. She was in purple robes that day and Kinley smiled. She liked purple. It was royal, majestic, perfect for herself as well. They were welcomed back and the professor teased them about missing Charms and told them to open up their books. Kin did as she was told, as usual (especially since there wasn’t dirt or ick involved) and opened her book as the teacher told them they were going to be working on the mending charm.

“At the front of the classroom in this box are empty glass bottles. Mending several pieces at once, however, is more difficult than focusing on mending just one crack or tear. That’s why everyone is going to first rip out a page of their textbook.”

Her head shot up to look at the professor. Sneaking a glance at her neighbor, she whispered, “Rip a page from our book? Is she serious?” My mother would murder me flat for doing this! she thought as she waited to see if her neighbor answered her.

The ripping sound brought her out of her reverie and her eyes widened even more as she realized their teacher had ripped her own book. Ripping sounds around her told the eleven year old that other people were doing as they were asked. Kin wanted to follow directions, but she had been taught never to disrespect a book, ever! What do I do? she thought to herself as she listened to what was said around her both by teacher and students alike.

“Now that that’s done, place the ripped page next to the rip as if you’re going to Spell-o tape it back together. The incantation is ‘Reparo.’ Let’s say it together: reh-PAH-roh. The wand movement is as such.”

The woman flicked her wand at the chalk and the movement of the wand was shown on the board. It looked like a backwards G. She did it with her wand next and McKinley watched as the page reattached itself to the binding of the book. Kin was surprised to see that it actually fixed the book to the point that nobody would ever have known it had been ripped and felt a sudden need to tear the book apart in frustration of everything she’d ever felt before in her life that bothered her. (Which was mostly anything dirty…)

“This is a fairly simple charm, so once you have successfully reattached your page, come see me for a glass bottle. With the glass bottle, you’re going to break it either on the floor or on your desk – please make sure the pieces don’t fly everywhere – and then you’re going to repair it. Once you have repaired it fully, you must bring the bottle back to me for inspection. If you need any help, come tell me. And with that, off you go.”

Kinley’s eyes widened. A page in a book is one thing, breaking that won’t hurt anything or get me dirty… But to break a glass bottle? That’s an entirely different story! she thought as she made up her mind to ask if she really had to break a glass bottle.

She looked down at her book and taking in a deep breath, ripped one of the front pages out of it. It felt wonderful! Almost like she was free of all fears, even. With a grin on her face, she picked up her wand. “Reparo!” she said as she made the same wand movements as the professor had before her.

I did it!? I actually did it? she thought as she waved her book towards Carter as if to tell him that she did it. This was a completely new McKinley, which maybe was a good thing…

She stood up and walked up to the teacher, taking her turn to show the page when the woman was ready to look at hers. When it was her turn, she looked at the professor and said, “Uhm… Do I have to break a glass?” she asked, nervously. Ripping a page had been one thing, breaking glass was another…

0 McKinley Andrews, Crotalus Ripping Books? Broken Glass? TAG: Prof. Olivers 0 McKinley Andrews, Crotalus 0 5

Professor Olivers

November 23, 2012 12:30 AM

Breaking glass is encouraged. by Professor Olivers

Looking at the progress her students were making, especially in the beginner's class, was encouraging, and she was pleased that several of her students were doing so well. She watched them get glass bottles, smiling at them when they made eye-contact with her, and was thinking of beginning the essay-grading for last week's batch when one of the girls came up. First-year, Andrews.

Florence had noticed Miss Andrews in particular as a more cleanly person which wasn't terrible in Charms class. However, after nodding in approval of her repaired page, she was slightly surprised by her question. It wasn't usual that Florence's lesson was questioned. At least, when students seemed to have problems with her teaching style they kept it to themselves. Not that Miss Andrews was insinuating that she was having problems with the lesson itself, but Florence sometimes did enjoy exaggerating. It was a good thing Terry had taught her how to check herself from time to time before she went overboard with it.

In her past experience with tutoring students, Florence had never come into contact with any student who had been hesitant to perform a charm on any sort of object. For the sake of academics, caution was mostly thrown to the wind. Of course, that was when she was a tutor. Things were different, as she was coming to know, in the classroom. Still, she didn't ever peg Miss Andrews as the type of girl to give her trouble, but breaking glass certainly was not the sort of job as kind of proper girl could do. This Florence had foreseen but had forgotten to mention.

"Yes, Miss Andrews, it is part of the lesson for today," Florence told her. "However, if you would like to use a paper bag to break the bottle in so the pieces will be slightly more controlled, you can." She transfigured a piece of parchment into a paper bag and handed it to her. "If you must, just drop it on the ground. The glass will certainly break them and probably in larger pieces."

Florence didn't want to show favoritism in any way towards her. The first-years she wanted to be firm with so they could learn how professors were in the classroom. She also felt that professors, at least the ones she had come into contact with back in Chicago, weren't always firm enough and tried to be a little too compensating. It didn't help students learn which is why she had so many students who needed to be tutored in her city. "If you need any more help, just let me know," Florence said with a kind smile, but there was a note of finality in her voice.

The beginner's class wasn't her favorite, but she did enjoy helping the children learn. She knew it would be rewarding to see the first-years she had taught pass their R.A.T.s exam at the end of their seventh year. Granted, if she stayed that long. Florence kept an eye on Miss Andrews to see if she would need any more help, but made sure that the students who came up for glass bottles got them okay as well.

0 Professor Olivers Breaking glass is encouraged. 0 Professor Olivers 0 5

Wendy

November 23, 2012 12:45 AM

Didn't mean to show off by Wendy

Wendy had been so busy being proud of her own achievement that she hadn't really looked at what her partner was doing. Maybe he wasn't used to doing magic either, though from what Waverly had told her, no student did real magi...il they were at school. Besides the uncontrolled magic that Wendy had sometimes done, of course.

She felt a little sorry for the boy and tried to think of a way to be nice. She didn't want to step on his toes by trying to help him since she didn't really know how to do that. So instead she flashed him a friendly smile and said, "Okay!" and went off to get the bottles.

She smiled at the professor briefly before breaking eye-contact as she picked up two glasses and went back to her seat. "Here ya go," she said as she placed one next to his book. "Have you made any progress?" she asked, looking interestedly at his book. She didn't want to make him nervous, but she was curious. She didn't just want to leave him hanging especially after she had kind of showed off. She also didn't want to distract him by blabbering on, so she stayed silent, watching him, until she realized that might be disturbing in itself. "If you don't want me to watch, I'll stop," she said, smiling a little apologetically. She was already seeing herself as a nuisance and she wasn't even trying.

Being the youngest who was left alone in the apartment when her sister was gone, her dad was at work and her mom was at the bakery downstairs, Wendy was really good at entertaining herself. She also had a habit of talking to herself outloud which she was trying hard to break, and though her mom called her "naturally charming," she thought she lacked normal-people social graces like her dad. If her partner didn't want her to watch him, she would busy herself with breaking her bottle. She had always wanted to break glass without getting in trouble for it. This class was kind of fun in Wendy's opinion.

OOC: Sorry for the long wait!

0 Wendy Didn't mean to show off 0 Wendy 0 5

Annabelle and Annette Pierce, Pecari

November 23, 2012 12:23 PM

Destruction is so destructive by Annabelle and Annette Pierce, Pecari

During their first half year at Sonora, the Anns had initially been confused by their utter lack of talent in most of their classes. They hadn't always exactly excelled at every lesson their mother gave them, but they had almost always done reasonably well. They were praised by their tutors for intuitive grasps of concepts and practice generally helped them show improvement over any remaining rough edges. The complaints had always been about lack of commitment, rushing through assignments without giving it due amounts of diligence, and lack of interest.

At Sonora, however, they had discovered that they just plain sucked at magic. In class, they could never get anything to work, not on the first try and not on the twentieth try. It wasn't even that they were doing the spells wrong. They were not getting mangled results, they were getting no results. Nothing was happening at all when they tried to use magic. Their classmates told them their technique was fine but they had to believe in it, or they had to concentrate more, or they needed to want it to happen. But they did believe it, they did concentrate, and they did want it.

And when they tried it in their room together, it worked fine, almost immediately, even though neither of them had been able to get so much as a wisp of magic from their wands during the lesson. But then on the tests, working individually, they couldn't do it anymore, and got failing mark after failing mark.

Slowly, they began to notice something weird.

If they worked alone, or if they tried to meet new people and so partnered with classmates other than each other, nothing happened. However, if they worked together, they could do the assignment as readily as anyone else could.

So they started showing up to class early enough to ensure they got seats next to each other. They stopped trying to split up so as not to intimidate other people with their sameness. They wanted their classmates to like them, but not at the cost of failing all of their first year classes. Generally, they could still split up in COMC, and as long as they didn't work alone in potions they could get partial successes, but the wand-work classes like Charms, Transfiguration, and most of DADA were the hardest.

They wondered if they should tell a teacher about the strange mental block or whatever it was that meant they couldn't do any magic by themselves, but were kind of afraid maybe one or both of them were a strange kind of squib and they'd get thrown out of the school if anyone found out. So they kept their discovery to themselves and tried to stick as close together during class as they could, and not get caught 'cheating' during tests when they exchanged the small non-verbal communications that seemed to be enough to let the magic get shared between them. Usually something as simple as a nod or eye contact was enough for basic charms, though some of the harder and more complex ones that Professor Olivers deemed above the level of first years required both of them to cast it simultaneously before they had any effect.

Today, though, they didn't think it would be necessary. She called it a fairly simple charm and indicated it was 'easy enough' so just proximity and a little encouragement between them should be plenty to get their pages and glass repaired successfully. Neither twin felt any compunction against ripping out a page of their text book, though they both giggled a little nervously and looked around for either their mother or Thaddeus to lecture them once they each had a page detached. Neither approach in a cloud of vengeful fury at the unnecessary defacement of property or disrespect to the written word, but Annette did find herself catching the eye of their girl sitting on her other side.

Returning the smile warmly, Annette answered, "Quite well, thank you," to her inquiry of how she was doing. Then she realized the older Teppenpaw probably meant with the assignment. "Oh, I mean, we haven't started yet."

She looked over at Annabelle. "Ready?" the other twin nodded. They raised their wands, pointed it at their torn pages, and cast, "Reparo!" with the circling backward G motion. Seeing as how they wanted this to work right, so as not to incur the wrath of either mother or cousin, it seemed better to err on the side of synchronicity. The pages reattached, though Annette's was a little off-set of where it should have been.

She showed it to the older girl, hoping her extra year of experience would be able to answer her questions: "Do you think that's close enough, or should I try it again? Would trying it again even fix that?"

1 Annabelle and Annette Pierce, Pecari Destruction is so destructive 246 Annabelle and Annette Pierce, Pecari 0 5

Kinley

November 25, 2012 2:33 PM

As long as its encouraged... Anyone else? by Kinley

McKinley had actually managed to rip her book and it felt good to the eleven year old. This was an odd development and she wasn’t too sure how to take it. She wondered what Jefferson or Grant would tell her if she wrote them about it, and shrugged as it had happened already. What would they be able to do about it from Hogwarts anyway, right? Maybe I’ll still ask them? she thought to herself as she walked up towards the teacher.

It wasn’t, to the Crotalus, that she was second guessing the lesson. Goodness no, she wouldn’t do that. What Kinley didn’t understand or desire was the dirt and possible harm that could do to herself (mostly) and others. Maybe the muggleborns could do this with ease, but, they’re dirty….

"Yes, Miss Andrews, it is part of the lesson for today. However, if you would like to use a paper bag to break the bottle in so the pieces will be slightly more controlled, you can."

“Yes, please…” was McKinley’s answer to the slight solution. She still wasn’t a fan of breaking something, but at least the dirt and shards wouldn’t hit her if they were in a bag! Professor Olivers transfigured a bit of parchment into a paper bag and handed it to Kinley.

"If you must, just drop it on the ground. The glass will certainly break them and probably in larger pieces."

“Like it was an accident to drop it?” Kinley sort of asked, but sort of answered her own question at the same time. “Okay.”

"If you need any more help, just let me know,"

“Thank you.” McKinley said, respectfully to the woman’s kind smile and finality in her voice. She put the glass directly into the bag and walked it back towards her seat. Taking in a deep breath, she dropped the bag on the floor beneath her and quickly covered her ears from the short loud breaking noise. Taking her hands off her ears when she was sure the sound was over, she picked up the bag and opened the end of it to look at all the pieces.

Look, but not touch.

Picking up her wand, she said the words again, “Reparo!” Most of the glass went back together, but there were a few bits missing. “Hm…” she said thoughtfully as she looked at her neighbor. “How did it work for you with all the pieces?” she asked, hoping it was someone clean at least she’d started talking to!

0 Kinley As long as its encouraged... Anyone else? 0 Kinley 0 5

Aubrielle Thornton, Teppenpaw

November 27, 2012 1:40 PM

Mending skills could be fun... couldn't they? by Aubrielle Thornton, Teppenpaw

Aubrielle’s midterm was one of many different emotions. The first emotion to speak of was the sadness in not having Addison home and the loss of being able to do a show in that short of amount of time. The second, happiness at seeing her family (though some weren’t there) and the Christmas Tree all lit up. The third, excitement over her presents Christmas morning. Lastly, anxiety over having to go back to school.

Addison had stayed at school over the winter break and Brielle was really worried about her older sister. The CAT’s Exams looming ever nearer for the fifth year was making her even more anxious then ever before, which was saying something. Addi was always the shy, quiet worrywart, but now… This was a whole new world for her. Bri was scared for herself and for her sister…

B had never been much of a worrywart, but without a doubt she was a Teppenpaw. She cared, in fact she cared a lot.

The Returning Feast went well, all except for the fact that she spotted Addison. Looking at her sister made her want to scream and cry at the same time. She had gotten so much bigger in the two weeks the others were gone, and that couldn’t be a good thing.

Through the whole feast she couldn’t stop looking at her sister to the point where she barely ate anything. At one point she caught Arista’s eye, to which her oldest sister nodded and pointed to her own plate. Oh… she realized that her oldest sister had been telling her to eat and it was only then when she looked at her own plate and had eaten.

Now that the Feast was over and classes had resumed, Brielle was forced into returning to normal life at school, and didn’t have a lot of time with all of her classes and clubs to worry as much about her sister as she had wanted to. She had seen her around the halls and in Teppenpaw, but Arista had stopped in the hallway to tell the second year not to worry that she had it all under control. Bri didn’t doubt her sister, but she also knew better than to think that only one person would be able to handle Addi and her feelings.

But right then, she knew that she had to go into the Charms classroom. She couldn’t stand out in the hallway all day…

She walked into the room and once the last student walked in, Professor Olivers closed the door and stood up. Brielle liked the woman, after all, she HAD been a professional actress, which is what Bri wanted so much to be. Bri longed to be like her, to learn from her, and wondered if one day she had the guts to ask, if the woman would train her like her acting teachers at home did, except at school instead. She missed theatre while she was away and wondered if this was a way it could work in her favor…

The one thing Brielle wished for was that Professor Olivers could have seen her perform at the concert!

This was what she was thinking about when the teacher welcomed them all back and asked them to open their books to page 45.

“We’re going to be learning the Mending Charm. This will be very helpful once you are able to perform magic in your home. Even in your dorm rooms. It is an important charm to know, so everyone please pay attention. At the front of the classroom in this box are empty glass bottles. Mending several pieces at once, however, is more difficult than focusing on mending just one crack or tear. That’s why everyone is going to first rip out a page of their textbook.”

Brielle looked at her in surprise. She’d never ripped a book before, she didn’t even like writing in her scripts! But now she needed to rip out a page in a textbook that she knew her family couldn’t really afford another one…? Professor Olivers picked up her own book and ripped out a page in her own book. Brielle watched as some of her classmates looked like they had been thinking somewhat of what she was, but she wondered what could happen if-

But then they all ripped their pages around her. Bri smiled, and wondered what it would feel like to really do it too. She took hold of the corner and pulled. The ripping sound made her adrenaline rush through her like waves in an ocean. “Wow…” she said softly, doubtful if anyone heard her.

“Now that that’s done, place the ripped page next to the rip as if you’re going to Spell-o tape it back together. The incantation is ‘Reparo.’ Let’s say it together: reh-PAH-roh. The wand movement is as such.”

Professor Olivers flicked her wand at the chalk and the movements were drawn on the board. Bri took notes quickly in her notebook. They were told to reattach the page together and then when that was done, go and collect a class bottle to break and fix with the same charm. Bri looked at their Professor and smiled, wondering if maybe this charm is what the woman used to fix things on stage or off.

“And with that, off you go.”

Brielle at that point looked at her neighbor. A first year, in Aladren house, or so she thought. The younger girl did as she was instructed to and put her torn page back next to the rip and said the charm. Half of it listened to the charm, but it looked like it wasn’t all reattached again.

“Was that as easy as it looked?” she asked the first year. Bri still held her ripped page in her left hand while her right sat on the book where the page belonged.

0 Aubrielle Thornton, Teppenpaw Mending skills could be fun... couldn't they? 0 Aubrielle Thornton, Teppenpaw 0 5

Anthony

December 05, 2012 11:09 PM

I think I'll take your advice, now that I'm back by Anthony

For the past few years, when he had been at home and had only seen his brothers during the school holidays, Anthony had often laughed at Arnold and Arthur when the latter lectured the former about how being at school was making him turn ‘too casual,’ warning him in a way – with dire terms uttered in Arthur’s driest, most pedantic tone – that Anthony couldn’t help but find comical of the things which would happen if their older brother did not try to behave more properly at Sonora. Since he had been here, though, he had started to think that maybe he had been wrong to do that. It was all too easy, he had found out, to just start talking and only after a second really realize what he was saying, and to whom. The real world wasn’t as much like an etiquette lesson as he had been led to believe it might be.

Some people, though, didn’t seem to have experienced that to the extent that he had. Effie Arbon, from Crotalus, was one of those. Really, though they had not really talked in their first half a year here, Anthony found her a little intimidating. She was very…exact, and she was already trying to throw parties, sort of. He thought those were grounds enough for a little intimidation.

“Er, good day, Miss Arbon,” he said, bowing in his seat in response to her curtsy-like gesture. “Thank you,” he added when she complimented his work. “You did well, too,” he added when he saw hers, which seemed to be a little too well-done. He wondered which Professor Olivers would mark better, the page which was not fully attached or the one which was too attached, and guessed it would be hers, the second one.

“It does,” he agreed with the platitude, then smiled and added, “or something close to it, anyway.” His mother did not like for people to talk about things being ‘perfect,’ so he had learned an aversion to using the word. He looked, since that topic seemed dead to him, for something else to say. “Like holidays,” he said, feeling unoriginal but safe. “Mine was close to it. Was yours?”

That had sounded much cleverer in his head. Anthony liked Arnold better than he did Arthur, but when it came to talking, he wished he was more like Arthur than Arnold, since the tallest of the three of them didn’t seem to have any problem, most of the time, with saying what he wanted to say how he wanted to say it. He might make it sound lethally boring, but at least he didn’t too often sound like he had almost gotten it right but had not quite made the jump. Hopefully, Miss Arbon would think he sounded smarter than he had thought he did. He was failing in his role - all of his roles, really; Anthony Carey, heir, socially competent heir, worthy member of Aladren, and so on - if she didn’t.

0 Anthony I think I'll take your advice, now that I'm back 0 Anthony 0 5

Effie Arbon, Crotalus

December 06, 2012 5:49 PM

I'm flattered (wotw) by Effie Arbon, Crotalus

The fact that Anthony Carey returned her formal greeting might have elevated him in Effie's opinion but he was, as far as she was concerned, already the supernal example of manners and good-breeding in their year group. It was something of a self-fulfilling prophecy; Anthony Carey was bound to be well-mannered. He had a numeral, for goodness' sake! Therefore unless he had run around enthusiastically hugging Muggleborns or greeted Effie by pulling her hair, she was bound to see the way he did things as just the way to be. His etiquette training would have been second to none, she assumed. She would have been very surprised, therefore, had she been able to read his inner thoughts. However, had she been able to get over this shock, she might have empathised. Life did not follow textbook examples and this made it terribly difficult.

“Thank you. That's terribly kind of you but..” she blushed a little as he complimented her work. This was a prime example of life not staying within the rules which she had been taught existed. One was supposed to be demure when complimented – by this rule, she should be modest about her work. However, one did not contradict a man. To a lesser extent, one did not admit openly to failings. However, that applied slightly more to males and – she thought – not necessarily to a classroom situation, where one was acquiring new skills. These were in full public view and did not always go flawlessly. Therefore not admitting it was just... bizarre, “I... I must be sure to be more careful next time,” by which she really meant controlled. But, for all that one could admit – she thought – to mistakes in the classroom, lack of control sounded so terribly improper.

His next remarks seemed a little enigmatic and it took Effie a moment to untangle them. His thoughts seemed to jump from her simple saying to saying holidays were almost something. Almost... perfect!

“Very clever,” she smiled as she joined the dots, assuming that that must be the only logical explanation. Anthony Numeral-Having Carey would not be inelegant with words, ergo anything that took her a moment to catch up with was due to her intellect being inferior to his.

“It was most pleasant, thank you,” she smiled. “I have missed the company of my sisters. Although there is much pleasant company here too, so it is no great hardship to return,” she smiled, even if her heartache at even mentioning Delphine and Araceli belied this.

She took a new sheet of parchment, as she could not really further her attempt on the last piece as those with half-attached pages could. At least she had not mutilated her book, and Anthony Carey seemed to be being too polite to mention her disregard of the instructions.

“I suppose I should try again. Then it's on to smashing glass...” she added, sounding less than enthused about the possibility.

13 Effie Arbon, Crotalus I'm flattered (wotw) 238 Effie Arbon, Crotalus 0 5

Henry

December 06, 2012 11:32 PM

Enthusiasm is the root of many a faux pas by Henry

Henry could tell he was flushing dully, humiliated by being bested by some girl from no family ever mentioned in any of his many genealogy lessons, by not being his best and what the family would be, could be, proud of. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, it wasn’t how things were supposed to be….

“Thank you,” he said, trying to force his tone toward politeness. It was not her fault. He would do himself no favors by drawing attention to his failures – more than had already been paid to them, anyway.

As Canterbury walked away, Henry watched her. For a few seconds, anyway. After that, the cap suddenly flew out of his inkwell, straight up; it only rose about an inch before it came clattering back down, but it did so violently enough that the inkwell began to tip over, while he was too startled to catch it before some of the ink had spilled. Muttering fiercely to himself, he took a piece of cheap paper – he could not afford to ruin his handkerchief – and tried to use it to mop up the ink that had spilled. The desk might take a small stain, but perhaps, if he was lucky, Professor Olivers would not notice, or would not realize he had been in this desk when it happened – she might blame it on someone in one of the upper classes, if he was lucky. Hopefully not one of his cousins, or his sister; he didn’t think they would all sit in the same seat all day.

“Thank you,” he repeated when she brought back the bottles. Then, “No.” He felt obliged to try to explain this and gestured toward the ink stain. “I – banged my elbow into my inkwell,” he explained. Now he sounded clumsy, but he knew that was better than losing control of himself the way he really had.

He tried to repair the page again, but was unnerved by her watching him. She seemed to notice, but instead of just stopping, she felt the need to say it out loud, which meant he had to deny it was a problem at all. To do otherwise would be impolite, acknowledging that someone who wasn’t one of his five siblings was annoying him. “It’s all right,” he said, then tried one more time…and blinked when it suddenly came together, just as though he were Canterbury when she had tried it for the first time.

“See?” he added dryly, with a rare glimmer of humor. He couldn’t see how else to react to that. He had learned to find some things funny or to get very angry about them, and getting very angry meant it was easier to get into trouble, which wasn’t good for someone who wanted not to be noticed. He tried to remember that. Sometimes, he did a better job than he did at others.

“I suppose we should break the bottles now,” he stated, looking at his without enthusiasm. He disliked the idea of smashing anything, but much less breaking something made of glass in a crowded room. Broken glass cut, like the ornaments two years ago...he had not gotten cut, but Brandon had, reaching in for a bulb carelessly, without looking to make sure that it was whole, as Henry always did.

OOC: Likewise!

0 Henry Enthusiasm is the root of many a faux pas 0 Henry 0 5

Wendy

December 07, 2012 3:11 AM

Better than being too serious and boring by Wendy

It seemed like Henry was trying hard to be polite and Wendy felt like she had to make it up to him somehow. She had no idea how to, though, but just watched as he made progress, noting the ink still on the table that was probably going to stain. She'd just have to remember not to sit there or put her elbow down on the table anywhere on that side until it dried completely. Why she'd put her elbow there in the first place didn't really matter in Wendy's mind.

However, when Wendy's eyes went back to Henry's book, she watched as the page came together perfectly. She beamed. "Great job! That looks really good." It was perfectly attached and Wendy restrained from running her finger down the place where the rip had been. She had to remember to keep her hands to herself. After all, she knew she couldn't treat everyone as her friend here. Some people probably wouldn't appreciate that. Henry's humor, though it had been very faint, had put Wendy at ease a little and she was back to her less tense self.

It didn't look like Henry was too excited to break his bottle, and a look of uncertainty crossed Wendy's face. "Yeah," she said. Breaking bottles would be fun, but she was a little afraid now of not being able to repair it. And how was she supposed to keep all the pieces from flying everywhere? Well, she would just have to break it like she had shattered her aunt's vase. Either by knocking it over or dropping it right onto the floor. Or her desk.

"You might want to stand back," she said gravely, glancing over at Henry. "I'm going to drop it onto the desk." She waited till Henry moved, and then dropped the bottle as she sat in her chair. It was a relatively short drop, and the glass looked somewhat thick enough to keep from breaking into a billion pieces. It broke easily into several big pieces instead and some little ones that flew to the side. At least it all stayed on the desk. Still, some of the pieces flew over to Henry's side, and she plucked up the pieces carefully and moved them to her side. "Sorry," she said as she scrambled to collect all of her pieces.

There were way more glass pieces than she had expected. This would be really hard to get them all back together. She looked over at Henry. "Do you want to break your bottle on the desk too or on the floor?" she asked. If he wanted to do it on the desk too, which she preferred, she'd try and move her stuff a little or at least make a barrier of some sort to keep their pieces separate enough. It would be bad if they got pieces of their glass bottles mixed up. Actually, Wendy wondered what would happen if that was the case.

OOC: If you want to break your bottle on the table, you can assume Wendy put her backpack in the middle to keep their pieces from mixing.

0 Wendy Better than being too serious and boring 0 Wendy 0 5

Melanie

December 07, 2012 4:04 PM

Well, yes by Melanie

Melanie watched as the twins did their assignment in unison. She was very close to her sister and they did a lot of things together but they'd never done anything quite so in sync. Valerie was two years older and the spells she was learning were more complex. She didn't need Melanie's help to do them, fortunately as they were in different classes, she was perfectly capable of it on her own. Which was good, it would likely help boost her self esteem some to be able to do something without help.

Not that these girls necessarily needed to do the spell at the same time either. It just looked like they had a tight bond. Such one that they did everything together even performing spells. Maybe it was because they were twins. Melanie had never met twins before, or anyone who had a closer sibling bond than she did with Valerie. It was nice to see, especially after hearing about Ryan and his sister. She didn't blame him either, that girl was awful.

Actually, Carrie O'Malley bothered Melanie on many levels and she was deeply ashamed to share great-grandparents with the girl. The Crotalus was rude, selfish, stuck-up and arrogant but the thing that bothered her most of all was the way she treated her brother. She should be grateful to have him, he was so kind to Valerie who Melanie knew wished he was their brother instead. Fortunately, Ryan seemed to get along well with his step-siblings from what the Teppenpaw understood and had a new baby sister whom he just adored. It was just that wretched girl who ruined everything.

"I think you did pretty good." Melanie replied. Some people didn't get any results, others mangled them. She personally tended to do pretty well in all subjects. "I would try again myself, but then I tend to like to get things completely right before moving on to the next step." She hoped she didn't sound condescending at all. It was just what she would do. They didn't have to listen to her advice. The Teppenpaw gave the twins another smile. She did want them to like her, they seemed like such nice girls.

"Oh, I'm Melanie Lennox of the St. Louis Lennoxes by the way." She introduced herself. "Pleased to meet you." The second year looked up at the bottles. She really didn't want to break one and take a chance on cutting herself or anyone else. The idea of broken glass everywhere seemed to be kind of an irresponsible one on the part of Professor Olivers actually. Someone could get badly hurt that way.

OOC-Sorry for the long wait.

11 Melanie Well, yes 226 Melanie 0 5

Henry

December 09, 2012 7:42 PM

Our opinions differ on that question by Henry

“Thank you,” Henry repeated when Canterbury complimented his completed assignment, beginning to feel a little like he was back with his etiquette tutors as he kept uttering the same response again and again, working his way through the whole list of them until finally, he was tested by having to respond when the prompts were all mixed up and thrown at him in rapid succession, doing it again and again until he always said exactly the right thing in response to each one.

When she suggested that he should stand back from the desk, Henry didn’t wait to be told twice. He stood up and stepped back at once, raising his arms to cover his face when she raised the bottle, though leaving himself enough space between his fingers to see what she was doing. His glasses, he reasoned, would protect his eyes if a piece of glass did fly this way, and he thought he could close his arms and fingers before any debris reached him, if he reacted, as he thought he would, the instant it started to look like some might, anyway.

None did, though, to his relief. “’Sall right,” he mumbled, starting to take his glasses off and then sliding them back up his nose after deciding he didn’t want to wipe them in front of someone after all before he sat down again. He wasn’t really sure what she was apologizing for, unless it was making him stand up. He watched as she pulled all the glass from her bottle together, and then reluctantly contemplated his own.

“Thank you,” he said again when she offered to set up a barrier between the desks while he broke his. “That will be…good.” He had wanted to use a better word, the kind of word he would think, but he felt odd speaking the way he thought sometimes. Today was such a time. He glanced at her. “You don’t have to move,” he added as he took out his handkerchief and wrapped the bottle in it twice before putting the bottle on his desk, then picking up the heaviest textbook he had in his bag and, as carefully, quietly, and tidily as he could, used it to crush the bottle.

“There,” he said, pleased, when he decided the glass had made enough crunching sounds. Unwrapping it, he found some pieces which were smaller than he would have liked, but his main concern had just been to not make a lot of noise, or make pieces of glass fly everywhere. he had wanted to make sure it was right and that it didn't make a mess. Having all the pieces of glass on a handkerchief - a towel would have been even better, but he didn't have one of those here - made it seem so much neater than just having it all on a desk would have been.

0 Henry Our opinions differ on that question 0 Henry 0 5

Wendy

December 09, 2012 8:12 PM

It's okay. We can still be friends! by Wendy

Henry didn't seem to be too much of a talker, so Wendy surmised, but it was okay. She could talk enough for the both of them if she wasn't in her own world. Sometimes she did slip into daydreams without even knowing it, but since her hands were busy, she didn't have the opportunity to. She watched Henry break his bottle and thought that was so much smarter than just breaking her bottle all over the desk.

"That's smart," she noted, feeling a little embarrassed that she hadn't thought of that. It wasn't like she carried a handkerchief around with her, though, so she couldn't have done that anyway.

Now it was time to repair the bottle. There were so many glass pieces Wendy didn't even know how to start. "Okay, um..." She didn't really have anything else to say. "I guess I'll try it now," she said, and then waved her wand the same way she had repaired the page. "Reparo!" Maybe it was Wendy's hesitation with the spell or her lack of confidence in how to repair the bottle, but it didn't go as she'd hoped. The pieces barely came together. Two pieces seemed to glue itself together, but it came apart again when she tried to see if it had worked, pulling them apart instead.

"Darn," she said, disappointed. "Well, I guess I couldn't expect to repair something on the first try twice, huh?" She looked over at Henry. "Your turn." Working in pairs and being able to talk while they worked was definitely Wendy's favorite part of class whatever the lesson was. Lessons seemed a lot more relaxed here, save for Potions.

0 Wendy It's okay. We can still be friends! 0 Wendy 0 5

Anthony

December 14, 2012 7:01 PM

I'm glad to please by Anthony

Anthony was not really sure what to do with Miss Arbon’s response to his compliment. He couldn’t figure out a way to respond that didn’t end badly. If he said one thing, then it sounded like he was accusing her of misrepresenting herself, and if he said something else, then it sounded like he was saying he had been lying when he said she did a good job in the first place. He had no idea which was worse – or, looking at it from the other side, less bad. Either way, though, he didn’t think it was a good position to be in, and he wasn’t sure how to resolve it.

“Mother always says improvement’s the name of the game,” he said finally after she said she would have to be more careful next time, relieved to see what felt like an opportunity to say something at least halfway diplomatic. “We’ll all get it right in the end, I’m sure of it.”

Even Henry, after all, got the hang of their spells in the end, the ones he had trouble with at first. Anthony wasn’t really sure what was going on with his cousin when it came to their classes; he had thought that it was just that Henry wasn’t very good at magic at first, which made sense since their grandmother had briefly mistaken him for a Squib last year, but Anthony had noticed that sometimes, the problem didn’t seem to be that Henry couldn’t do magic, it was just that he couldn’t always get it to do what he actually wanted it to do, which was a completely different problem. Twice over midterm, he had heard conversations that he had thought about offering that observation in, but he never had; it had been too deeply impressed on him that they were never really supposed to talk about what had happened last fall.

Anthony wasn’t sure if she really thought he was clever, since he had not sounded half as clever to himself as he had expected to, but he smiled, too, when Effie did and listened to her talking about her holiday, mostly how she had missed her sisters. “It is nice here, isn’t it?” he said, looking around at their class with mild affection. He didn’t know everyone very well, but he thought of himself as getting along with them all, so that was good enough, wasn’t it? At least he didn’t have any enemies. He had been hearing about how it was important not to have enemies for as long as he could remember. “Though, both of my brothers are older than me and in my House, too, so I see them all the time wherever we are.”

In a manner of speaking, anyway. They didn’t sit together at meals at school the way they did at home, of course, so there were weeks when he mostly only spoke to them at Quidditch practice, but they were always around now. Anthony knew that if he needed something from one of them, he couldn’t imagine what that might be but if he did, he could always find one of them if not both pretty easily and just ask for it. That, he had to admit to himself, had been comforting to think about in the whole strange new world that was school, especially back during the first few weeks, when he was trying to get used to it all.

Anthony heard reluctance in Effie’s tone when it came to smashing the bottle as the next part of their assignment. “I can do it for you, if you like,” he offered, thinking that offering to keep a lady from having to do something she found unplesasant was the proper thing to do. On that point, he felt confident enough. "The smashing, anyway," he added anyway, so it was clear that he wasn't offering to really do her work for her. That would most definitely be improper, regardless of who he was talking to.

0 Anthony I'm glad to please 0 Anthony 0 5

Henry

December 14, 2012 7:49 PM

You're an optimist, aren't you? by Henry

Henry looked sideways at Canterbury for a moment and then decided she was probably being sincere in her compliment and bowed his head in acknowledgment. “Thank you,” he said, feeling more like a clockwork Auror by the moment. “I…don’t like messy things,” he said, to excuse himself for the sake of modesty, so he did not sound as though he were just coming up with better ways to do thing to upstage her. That would be impolite.

He wasn’t sure, though, that he hadn’t been impolite anyway, without meaning to. There was a world of difference between being impolite because someone had severely annoyed him and he really wanted them to go away or at least stop talking and being impolite because he didn’t like to talk and either said too little or said too much without any context, at least in his book. “Not that I mean that you do,” he added carefully. “I’m just…used to thinking that way. One has to be careful at my house.”

With so many of them, it would be hard to keep things perfectly neat even if everyone had shared his aversion to certain kinds of mess, notably not the mess of books and paper in his room at home. He really did not know how his grandmother, with her need for everything – and everyone, his subconscious added helpfully, making his shoulders start to curl in involuntarily before he made them stop – to be just so-so, had dealt with having five children, even for the very little while that Aunt Belinda and Aunt Emma had been alive at the same time and she’d had five children instead of just four. Maybe they thought she’d try to kill them, too.

That was an improper thought, he knew. He was not supposed to think that Grandmother had tried to kill him. She had been trying to help him, to help the whole family. She had been trying to do what she thought was best, what she thought was right. That it had involved him nearly dying had just been an unfortunate side effect; if he had been wizard enough, it never would have gotten that far. He didn’t make himself take the thought back, though. Instead, he held onto it with an angry sense of defiance, at least for the moment. Later, he might feel guilty, but even when he did feel guilty, he usually still felt at the same time that he had a right to be a little perturbed if what his grandmother thought was best ended somehow in some of his ribs being on the outside for a while after he fell from twenty-five feet in the air because he tried to unconsciously to Apparate and bungled it nearly as badly as it could be bungled.

“No,” he agreed solemnly when Canterbury said she couldn’t be expected to get it on the first try twice. “No, I suppose not.” He lifted his wand. “Perhaps it’s my turn,” he said, then added, “to get it right with the first try.” He decided to stop trying for moments of levity. He wasn’t any good at them.

“Reparo,” he said, and flinched back, his free arm moving up to protect his glasses again, as a few of the larger pieces flew back together more violently than he had expected, while smaller pieces tried to squeeze in around them, producing an unnatural grinding, occasionally almost chiming kind of noise until it stopped about halfway through getting all of them back into a lump. “It could use work,” he said as he looked at it, feeling frustrated with the progress or lack of it.

0 Henry You're an optimist, aren't you? 0 Henry 0 5

Effie Arbon

December 17, 2012 2:31 PM

I'm glad to be working with you by Effie Arbon

“Yes, indeed,” Effie nodded as Anthony recalled the wise words of his mother. Delphine, being a little younger, sometimes took a little longer to grasp their lessons (although mostly they were on a par). The tutors never got angry with her, with either of them fact, so long as they kept trying. From what little she could discern – she was never told such things but people made remarks – the trouble with Araceli was that she did not. She was sure her youngest sister did not mean to not try but she was just so terribly afraid of failing. If she was unsure, she tended to be paralysed by the fear of getting it wrong.

She was not sure that she could agree quite so wholeheartedly with his next statement, not that that would prevent her from doing so.

“Oh yes, it's delightful,” she nodded. As Anthony explained the ready availability of his relatives she began to see how the school could be such a thing. If she was safely surrounded by family, she was sure she would feel different. There were nice things about it, she supposed. The people she had conversed with thus far were utterly charming. The people outside of her social class had not bothered her as much as she had feared they might. There was a certain amount of pandering to their cause but no one had actually forced her to join hands and sing a jolly song about unity with them. It might even have been possible to persuade her that some of the professors were merely saying the right sort of things for show, so that they seemed to toe the official school line. The things that were wrong about school, how different it was, how often she found herself getting tongue tied, were not really faults of the specific school so much as school, as opposed to the safe comfort of home, in general. Things were improving in that department too. She had conversed perfectly well, she thought, with Alan Raines, and this first meeting with Anthony Carey seemed to be going reasonably well. Boys were a strange new species but they were proving to be a rather gentle and kind one. Part of her wished to express this, in the form of thanks, to Anthony Carey. She wished to express the fact that he put her at ease and she was grateful for it but she was not sure that there was a proper way to communicate such a thing.

“There seems to be plenty of enjoyable company,” she added to her somewhat non-specific praise, “Everyone I have had the pleasure to meet so far has been friendly,” That did not fully express what she wished to but it came closer than saying nothing at all.

“Would you? That's so terribly kind,” she smiled, when Anthony offered to break the bottle for her. She was not quite sure whether he was saving her from what she needed to be saved from as she wasn't entirely sure what that was. If it was that it was improper for her to going around smashing things, then he was. If it was more the exposure to flying glass and general chaos that unnerved her, then she was still to be subjected to such things. She could not quite decide which it was although she rather thought it was the latter. Still, a chivalrous offer was a chivalrous offer and she appreciated the gesture immensely, regardless of whether it achieved its intended purpose. Anthony Carey wished to minimise her distress, and that was an enjoyable feeling.

“I shall fetch us the necessary glassware,” she smiled. She did feel that that was really a fair division of labour but she felt the need to do her bit towards them obtaining the broken glass; if he was to do the breaking, she would do the fetching. She returned with the two glass bottles and prepared herself not to cower or flinch as he did his duty.

13 Effie Arbon I'm glad to be working with you 238 Effie Arbon 0 5

Wendy

December 19, 2012 10:16 PM

How could you tell? by Wendy

Wendy enjoyed messy things a lot, but glass being everywhere was not one of them. It was too dangerous to have sharp pieces of glass lying around everywhere. At least she knew that much. She could understand Henry not liking messy things; Wendy's friends back home didn't like playing in the mud as much as she did and sometimes called her crazy for liking it. It didn't mean they weren't friends though. She was curious as to why people had to be careful at Henry's house, so she asked. "Why do people have to be careful at your house?" It was a valid question. She really didn't know what life was like aside from the one she had lived.

It was a little discouraging that her bottle hadn't come together all the way like her page had on the first try, but it would be okay. She watched Henry's attempt. His seemed to be a little better, but it wasn't perfect yet either. At least Wendy wasn't the only one. Sometimes she wondered if the kids who had grown up in magical households had stronger magic than she had. Her older sister didn't believe it, but Wendy still wondered.

"It's okay. My mom always said, 'if at first you don't succeed, try again.' It doesn't always make me feel better, but at least there's hope that you have a second chance. Or third or fourth, whatever." It seemed like an antediluvian phrase, one that she didn't really care about as much as her mom did. She smiled at Henry and then turned to her bottle. "My turn."

Wendy tried to think of what her bottle would look like all put back together, but she could barely remember what the bottle had looked like before. Obviously she had been too interested in breaking it. She 'hum'-ed for a moment before tapping her wand against the glass and hearing the little tinkle it made. It sounded pretty, a lot prettier than the grinding sound Henry's had made when it was trying to come together. Maybe hers would make that sound too. She hoped not, unless that sound meant it was being repaired.

"Reparo!" she said commandingly, but it sounded silly to her ears in her childish voice. "Reparo," she repeated in a slightly lower tone, but by then her pieces were already moving around. At least Henry had glasses to protect his eyes; Wendy didn't have anything and she was kind of afraid that one of the pieces would get stuck in her eyes and she'd be like the little boy in The Snow Queen. Except this was a bottle, not a mirror. Anyway, she really hoped there weren't any snow queens here like that, or awful mirrors, but one could never be too sure.

Her bottle didn't really repair itself perfectly and she humphed. "Phooey!" she said, crossing her arms. The bottle was less than a quarter fixed, but at least it was something. She just had to look on the bright side. She sighed audibly and then turned to Henry. " 'If at first you don't succeed, try again,'" she said glumly. "Anyway, it's your turn. Go ahead."

0 Wendy How could you tell? 0 Wendy 0 5

Anthony

December 25, 2012 11:32 PM

I'm glad to hear that, too by Anthony

“Most people here do seem to be friendly,” Anthony agreed with Effie, thinking back to how easily the boys had all arranged a pick-up Quidditch game at their first flying lesson. Somewhere between Arnold and Arthur’s accounts of life in Aladren, Anthony had almost expected things to be sharper-edged even with people he got along with, but so far, his experience had been all smooth sailing, without many ruffles. The most disconcerting thing he could think of from this year was how he still had no idea which of the Pierce twins was actually which, and he didn’t think anyone else did, either, so that was all right as long as he didn’t think about it too much and just, if he interacted with them, focused directly on the one he was speaking to or picked one to look at if a comment was really directed toward them both.

He nodded when she said she would go to get the bottles they – or rather, he – would have to smash. “Thank you,” he said, wondering if he should volunteer to do that, too, and spare her any trouble but deciding finally, and not least because she was already moving that way, that it might be interpreted as him thinking she wasn’t even competent to carry the bottles across the room, which would be bad.

Besides, Anthony had something else to do, and that was figure out how to actually break them without doing something that would make Mother give him one of her especially long and unpleasant speeches if she ever heard about it. If the time Brandon had done both things in one day was anything to go by, ending up with a handful of broken glass was worse than getting one of those speeches about it, but not by much. Anthony thought he would be happier if he skipped both experiences, and also the experience of having glass fly everywhere and cut people.

When Effie got back, Anthony was kneeling on the floor, busily arranging his tallest books into a square in front of him. He glanced up at her. “Do you think we should add your textbooks to the top, too, to make it taller?” he asked, wondering too if he could get them to balance, but thinking he probably could, if he had a minute to tinker with them. “So glass doesn’t get out of the circle, I mean,” he added, in case it wasn’t clear what he was doing.

Once he was satisfied with his attempts at safety, Anthony stood well back and held a bottle out over the book circle with the tips of his fingers. He thought for a moment, wondering if he could come up with anything better, but failed. “And here we go,” he said under his breath, hoping this would work the way it did in his head, before he dropped the first bottle. When it hit the floor, he heard a satisfactory tinkling of broken glass and finally dared to look. Once he had, he was pleased to see that his setup with the books seemed to have worked pretty well.

“Ladies first?” he offered to Effie, bowing slightly and gesturing toward the available broken bottle. He could take the second turn, since he thought taking it in turns was the only way they would really be able to do it right, or at least right without a lot of trouble.

0 Anthony I'm glad to hear that, too 0 Anthony 0 5