Rain and woodwinds sound like a bad combination on Charms

Professor Olivers

October 17, 2014 4:11 PM

Playing with the Weather. [VI & VII years] by Professor Olivers

Since returning from the snowy weather of Chicago where her older brother lived, Florence had caught a cold. The intense freeze of Chicago had not been good to her despite the warmth her brother’s family and her boyfriend had provided. It was unfortunate she hadn’t arrived to school sooner to prepare lessons and readjust to Arizona. Two days after she arrived would be the first day of the second term. In those two days, Florence took as much cold medicine as she could and bundled up in her blankets, drinking hot liquids to try and smother the cold before it could get any worse.

It had done some good to her and she no longer had a fever as she prepared for the Advanced lesson in the classroom. Her throat was still a little scratchy and she had the sniffles, but at least she could think clearly again and teach like a normal professor. Florence was looking forward to today’s lesson and she was glad she wouldn’t have to miss it. With her Advanced class, she always liked to push the limits and see what her students were capable of. Outside of the classroom, she wasn’t sure if they would get the opportunity to use these particular charms, but it would be fun while they were in school. The theoretical work would be especially important for her seventh-years who would be taking their RATS at the end of the term.

The clock struck the class hour and she closed the doors with a wave of her hand as she usually did before standing up. “Welcome back, students,” she said with a smile. “I hope you all had a wonderful vacation, but it’s time to hit the books again.” She made her way to the front. “Some announcements: for those of you taking your RATS, I will be available for tutoring sessions in my office from 9:30 to 10:15 on Thursdays. If you have an O in my class and would like to be my tutoring assistant, please see me after class. If you have any other questions, please make an appointment to see me during my office hours.”

Florence didn’t think there was anything more she had to say about that. Finally onto the lesson. “Now, with that said, please turn to page 347 in your textbook. We will be learning about Atmospheric Charms today.” Once the page flipping had died down a little, Florence took a look at her own textbook and wrote the name of the charm on the blackboard. “The Atmospheric Charm is a type of Weather-Modifying Charm. This spell is usually used indoors and keeps buildings cool during hot days. There is a theory that there are environmental ramifications to using them outside, however, but it is not yet proven. For your essay due in two weeks, I want you to argue whether or not the Atmospheric Charm affects the environment.

“The incantation for the Atmospheric Charm is Aeris tempero. To remove the charm, the spell is Meteolojinx Recanto. Meteolojinx recanto is a general spell that removes all Weather-Modifying Charms. On your desk there should be clear boxes with little scenes in them.” The boxes had plastic sides with an open top. Inside the scenes could vary from outdoorsy to rock concerts to office cubicles. “In these boxes, I want you all to create a certain weather condition. You can make it cool inside, cloudy, snowy, warm, rainy—be creative. The scenes inside don’t matter as much as how well you are able to create the weather condition. Once you have succeeded, bring your box to me so I can check your work. You can work together, but each of you must bring your own box to show me. After you have finished, you can work on your essays until class ends. Go ahead and begin.”

OOC: The topic of Atmospheric Charms can be found here. Be creative, but also realistic with your posts. Once finished, you can assume Florence looked at the box and made a note that it was finished.

Subthreads:

Planning a winter wonderland by Lucille Carey, Teppenpaw with Annabelle Pierce, Pecari, Lucille

Rain and woodwinds sound like a bad combination by Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren with Effie Arbon, Crotalus, Anthony, Anthony Carey

Fogging up the place by Wendy Canterbury - Pecari

0 Professor Olivers Playing with the Weather. [VI & VII years] 0 Professor Olivers 1 5

Lucille Carey, Teppenpaw

October 19, 2014 1:50 AM

Planning a winter wonderland by Lucille Carey, Teppenpaw

Lucille's holidays had been very pleasant, and she wasn't even entirely sure it was just by comparison with how she knew from past experience that they might have gone. Mal continued to seethe with a barely-suppressed rage she had to pretend not to even notice every time Evan's name was so much as mentioned and Theresa was still sulking over being jilted by that boy - Lucille gathered that Arthur had reported that the tales he'd gathered from the Anglo-American magical community in Rome all indicated that Mr. Princeton had lied about being engaged to Sonora's resident Italian, something which had set Theresa off again almost as much as Jay then refusing to disfigure the poor girl for her - but she had even managed to have pleasant times with them, and Mother and Stepmother had been getting along, and it had been good to see Baby - her half-brother called himself 'Andrew' now, but Lucille was too used to only Mal ever calling him that, she thought, to make the change - again, and she had gotten many nice gifts and they had done things almost like the families she read about in sentimental novels....

It had been unusually, for home, cold, but other than that, it had been a good holiday, and Lucille had been sorry to see it end. It had not helped at all that the end of the holidays coincided with the reality of RATS setting in. Mother had ventured no opinion on the subject except that Lucille should not fail anything, but Lucille had had to speak with Morgaine about them over the summer, and Morgaine had told her to do as well as possible and that she would be displeased with her if she represented the family poorly. Morgaine particularly had not been at all subtle about letting Lucille know that she should do well in Defense Against the Dark Arts and in Transfiguration, neither of which Lucille naturally excelled in. The Charms classroom was a haven from that pressure, but even in it, the RATS weren't going away: Professor Olivers mentioned them almost at once, making Lucille make a face before she caught herself.

She didn't completely stop herself from reacting a little to the assignment, either, though her look of horror only lasted for a second. Logically, she knew it was silly, but weather charms were just not things she wanted to touch with a twenty-foot pole after last year. Especially the counter-charm...well, Lucille knew she wasn't powerful enough to do any real damage accidentally or on purpose, and didn't remember any of her classmates seeming so, either, before, and they were all old enough that they should have their powers firmly under control by now, but....

She looked at the box on her desk. Tiny people seemed to be in an informal restaurant, drinking lots of coffee. Their drinks were hot - she could see tiny wisps of steam in the cups - so maybe it wouldn't bother them too much if she made it snow on them just a little.

"What kind of room did you get?" she asked a neighbor conversationally, watching a tiny figure in green carrying another pot of coffee to a table. "I think I got my cousin's version of Heaven." Jay had been very upset with the scarcity of coffee last fall, and he and the beverage had wasted no time picking right back up where they left off in the spring. Lucille didn't like the taste but had to admit that it could help with studying.

0 Lucille Carey, Teppenpaw Planning a winter wonderland 0 Lucille Carey, Teppenpaw 0 5

Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren

October 20, 2014 12:04 AM

Rain and woodwinds sound like a bad combination by Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren

Anthony had enjoyed spending time at home with his parents, older brother, and sister-in-law over the holidays. It had almost, after the previous summer of it, too, not seemed strange to see Arnold and never Arthur; they had all known Arnold was not happy about his first Christmas without his twin and all the interruptions to family traditions that Arthur’s absence brought, but he had handled it better than Anthony had expected, usually just being even more cheery and energetic, though he had looked a little like a lost puppy for a few minutes when they got their presents at their parents’ house and Arthur wasn’t there. Anthony had distracted him quickly, though, and they had gone on opening presents and drinking cocoa, discussing whether America would make it past the first round in the qualifiers for the World Cup this year until his brother’s mood had passed.

The coziness of the living room, with the decorated fir tree in the corner and the hot chocolate pot full and the rain coming down heavily outside, seemed a long way away from the classrooms. Anthony enjoyed the rigorous program of study he was engaged in, for the most part, but unlike Arthur, he didn’t think he preferred it to the comforts of home. He didn’t resent the demands the family made on him the way he had thought about doing before, but the fact still remained that his older brothers had gotten to choose how they conducted themselves in school and what they were doing now that they were out of it, both luxuries that Anthony didn’t feel he had ever really had access to.

He chose to look on the bright side, which was that ambition did not look like a comfortable quality to possess. It helped that he honestly didn’t think any of his brothers or cousins were the sort of ambitious which would make them turn on him. Arnold was ambitious, in a way – he wanted to excel in his sport – and Arthur and Jay in a more conventional way, but none of them seemed to want his chair at the table much more than he did, and none enough to engage in dirty business to get it away from him. That in no way excused him from excelling at…well, nearly everything, though, so he put thoughts of the holidays aside as Professor Olivers moved from hoping they’d had happy ones to giving the lesson of the day, getting his quill out to write down incantations.

Afterward, he studied the box in front of him, which seemed to contain a symphony orchestra. Getting the scale right seemed like the tricky part to him, though he could be wrong; maybe Professor Olivers wouldn’t care if the figures were completely drowned as long as there was enough of a gap between them and the top of the box for her to see it was raining inside the box when he carried it to the front – unless the charm was just so complex that they would have trouble producing a noticeable effect even in a small box. He remembered seeing Jay among weather books last year, looking frustrated, and probably other older students as well, but he hadn’t assumed, after he found out what had really caused the problem, that it was their fault they hadn’t been able to dismiss the clouds, as they had not really been weather at all….

“What weather condition are you going to try?” he asked one of his neighbors, finding it interesting that the incantation was the same for all variables - it seemed like that would lead to a lot of accidents, which could be very bad in, say, a kitchen on a tight schedule, or around antiques, not to mention instruments like the ones in his box, if they had been real.

0 Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren Rain and woodwinds sound like a bad combination 0 Anthony Carey VIII, Aladren 0 5

Effie Arbon, Crotalus

October 20, 2014 4:59 AM

How about rain and plank and string thingies? by Effie Arbon, Crotalus

Effie slid punctually into her seat in Charms, a well practised face of attentiveness on whilst her mind churned over other matters. She was half listening to Professor Olivers and, as the teacher reminded the seventh years about their upcoming exams, found a silver lining to the grey cloud that had been dogging her since she got back to school. She wasn't sure what she had hoped for – Araceli could not exactly undergo a miraculous personality transformation to ease her into school life, and it was scarcely a surprise that father trying to threaten one out of her had had the opposite effect. Perhaps she had hoped that her sister might perk up once they were back at school, though what logic there was to that she couldn't say. Araceli still looked tired and frightened, and Effie still couldn't think of a way to help her. She could scarcely march up to the respectable Purebloods in Araceli's year and demand that they made friends with her, especially given her sister would struggle to reciprocate any overtures of friendship that were made towards her.

The Charms project sounded interesting enough, and definitely tricky. She was almost glad of complex school work as it might be just enough to take her mind off her worries. When she wasn't thinking about Araceli, there was also the opening dance of the ball to worry about, and the fact that she was powerless to solve that problem for herself. It was a reflection of her concern for her sister, however, that this crossed her mind relatively little.

She took a box, watching the little people inside. There was a large crowd of them wearing scandalous attire and jumping up and down in a movement so unlike her own refined waltz steps that she didn't even recognise it as dancing. There was a man on a stage at the front playing a strange plank with strings on. More strings ran out of it to boxes all over the stage. She could just about recognise that it must be some sort of instrument from the way he used it but it was unlike anything she'd seen before. She assumed it would be easiest to channel a weather type that reflected her mood, which was definitely overcast and probably tended towards rain. As she suspected she had a box full of Muggles it did not incline her to be any more clement in her choice of weather.

She glanced up, heart skipping slightly as she found herself next to Anthony Carey. Sitting next to eligible dates was about as much as she could do to further her chances of finding a dance partner and here she had stumbled across one – quite possibly the most desirable candidate – when she hadn't even been trying. A little ray of sunshine peeked through the clouds, though a very weak and scattered one. It was a bit of a leap from simply being in the geographical vicinity of a nice young man to that young man asking you to a dance, and she now felt rather under pressure to seem like a desirable and interesting person to spend time with – an irritating effect of which tended to be one's mind going blank of all topics of conversation. Well, there was always the weather....

“I was thinking of making it rain,” she admitted, trying to make that sound neutral – like it was the first weather condition that had popped into her head. She wasn't convinced she sounded convincing though. It was rather hard to comment that one felt like making it rain without sounding like a rather melancholy soul, and she wished the topic had been somewhat less indicative of her inner feelings. No one wanted a sad date.

“I think I got a box full of cultists,” she added, turning the little scene to face Anthony and keen to move the conversation on, “They all appear to worship the man at the front with the strange instrument, so I don't feel too bad about breaking up their meeting.

“What are you planning to do?”

13 Effie Arbon, Crotalus How about rain and plank and string thingies? 238 Effie Arbon, Crotalus 0 5

Anthony

October 21, 2014 1:19 PM

It's probably not that good for them, either by Anthony

“Cultists? Really?” Anthony asked, surprised. That was…creative, he thought, though he guessed he could be wrong about how novel they really were since he didn’t think he had ever had a relative in one. Mother had once said that being a Carey was a little like being in a cult itself, but he thought she had been joking. Or at least he really hoped she had been joking; he didn't like to think that his family was that strange.

He looked at the little figures in Effie’s box, who did appear to be violently transported by their emotions. “Could be cultists,” he agreed. “Maybe he’s hypnotizing them somehow with the instrument?” There were magical instruments that could do that. They were, in theory, illegal, like the banned cursed books of the world were, but the story went that the old harp in a case at the Fourth’s had been used by his great-great-great-etc. grandmother to bewitch the Muggles out of a chunk of land the Second had taken a liking to. Anthony had never asked; everyone knew that the Fourth and Great-Great-Grandmother and Great-Grandfather had grabbed every magical artifact they could lay hands on when they fled Virginia when they were young, and they had acquired others since, too, so it was usually safest not to ask or touch in their house. His brothers had both learned that the hard way, repeatedly, when they were younger, but Anthony had been the obedient child who minded his own business.

“I was…ah, actually, rain was the first thing I thought of, too,” he admitted when asked. “There aren’t really many weather conditions, are there?” Sunny, overcast, raining, snowing – the main difference was intensity. Rain versus a storm, sun versus one of the days in the summers at home when Mother wouldn’t even allow them out of doors because she was afraid they’d have heat strokes. “Rain and snow seem like the easiest, so I’ll switch to snow.” If two people sitting together did the same thing, he was pretty sure Professor Olivers would consider it uncreative, and sometimes teachers took points for that.

Now how to do it. He thought rain and snow would be easiest because it was just conjuring up water and letting gravity do the rest, with snow having one more step, the freezing of the water. It would have to be carefully done, though, or else the ice would be big sharp icicles obeying gravity and they would get to find out if the little people in the boxes had been designed with internal organs. Anthony very much hoped they had not, that they were just Charmed and not Transfigured in any way, and hoped only a small degree less that they wouldn’t even notice the changing weather conditions around them, but he guessed he would find out if he rained down huge, at least from their perspective, icicles on them.

“Aeris tempero,” he tried, focusing on the idea of little snowflakes the size of flecks of ground pepper. A few tiny flakes did fall, which excited him for the moment it took him to notice that they looked a little bit…grayish-black, at least by the standards of his idea of snow. He had not seen much in person, just glimpses when he went to parties, or stuff which had been conjured; he thought it had really snowed where he lived only twice in his life, both when he was very young and neither lasting more than a few minutes.

“Maybe pepper wasn’t the thing to think of to get the scale right,” he said. Or at least I should try thinking about white pepper next time, he added silently, not quite enough at his ease with Effie to joke much with her. Really cheating like that would be beneath him – beneath his House, his position in life, his actual abilities, everything. There was also a good chance that Professor Olivers would notice if he did, too. Remembering color, though, might actually be a good idea for his next attempt.

0 Anthony It's probably not that good for them, either 0 Anthony 0 5

Wendy Canterbury - Pecari

October 22, 2014 8:58 PM

Fogging up the place by Wendy Canterbury - Pecari

All night long Wendy had been in a slight daze. She was pleased that she was going to the ball with Rupert, but it was the way that he'd asked her that she couldn't stop thinking about. It was magical; a scene pulled straight from a fairy tale. She had written her sister all about it. Wendy couldn't wait for the ball to come. She would have to dance in front of the school since she was a Prefect, but after learning how to dance from Carter during the last Midsummer ball Sonora had, she didn't think she would trip over her own feet. Rupert probably knew how to dance really well since he was a pureblood and that seemed standard in their handbook. If there was a handbook.

Charms had always been Wendy's favorite class after COMC. It was just the kind of magic she had dreamed of as a very little girl reading fairy tales. She also loved using her wand. It was a stick of wood that was seriously a part of her now; it felt alive, and Wendy connected to it in a way she hoped to connect to all of nature. Not all of nature, however, was magical in that way.

Professor Olivers was a little scary, but Wendy liked how flamboyant she could be. It was a lot of fun having a former actress as their professor. All of the professors were quirky in their own way, one of the many things she really enjoyed about Sonora. She wouldn't need tutoring, but it was nice of the professor to offer it. She couldn't imagine ever being a professor and teaching three classes every single day. Acting was more of Wendy's style. Though she had an O in Charms, she didn't want to be a tutoring assistant. That kind of went with teaching. It would be perfect for someone who wanted to be a Charms professor someday, but not for her.

Once Professor Olivers had finished her lecture, Wendy looked into her box. She had a scene of little non-magical figures jumping into a pile of leaves in what looked like a park. The ground was covered in grass with the occasional leaves littering the ground, save the pile the little people had created. There was a white strip of a path that ran right through the middle. The colorful leaves on the miniature trees broke off occasionally, but there was no wind or anything to speed up the process. It looked so nice that Wendy didn't even want to mess it up for them. They all just looked so happy. But the whole point of this lesson was to create weather, so Wendy decided to make it a cool and cloudy day. She didn't want to torture the people too much even if they weren't real.

Wendy pointed her wand at the box and said, "Aeris tempero," just as Professor Olivers had said. A large cloud filled the entire box wall-to-wall and Wendy gasped. That was definitely not what she had been going for. "Meterlojinx recanto!" she exclaimed, and the cloud disappeared. The little people moved around as if they were disoriented and a little lost. It had probably looked like fog to them. Really, really thick fog.

Wendy cast the spell again, and again a large cloud formed, large enough to probably envelope the entire box. This time it floated right above the people who didn't seem perturbed at all by it. "I can't seem to get the clouds to the right size," she said, frowning. "What kind of weather are you making?" she asked her seat partner?

0 Wendy Canterbury - Pecari Fogging up the place 0 Wendy Canterbury - Pecari 0 5

Effie Arbon

October 23, 2014 10:10 AM

Oh, what's the worst that could happen? by Effie Arbon

“It's definitely causing some sort of frenzy, whatever he's doing,” she agreed, as Anthony pondered whether the man was hypnotising the people. Whilst controlling the will of others was, in its purest form, a preserve of magic, she had learnt about the inferior minds of Muggles being able to be swayed by things amounting to cheap parlour tricks – hypnosis, being whipped up with words, and the way this sort of hysterical reaction easily passed amongst groups. It was largely how religion worked and how Muggle leaders convinced one large group to go out and shoot others, which they did on a frequent basis.

“No,” she agreed, when Anthony mentioned the lack of weather types, “and the scenes all seem to be fairly neutral to start with as well, which means the most obvious thing to do is turn it for the worse – I mean, very sunny isn't much distinct from merely bright, and unless you have a lot of flags or trees, wind is not going to be very evident unless you create an absolute hurricane. I think snow's a good idea for yours though. Your people look like they're actually behaving and having a civilised evening. Rain would probably spoil it whilst snow might make it seem romantic. Christmas is always all the better for having it, I find.” That wasn't a romantic atmosphere but it was reflective of snow's ability to set the scene. It was easy for her to picture a pleasingly snowy landscape, just having come from Maine in winter. It usually snowed at some point in the year but when it came for Christmas it just made everything seem sharp and clear and brilliant. She had taken lots of walk in this year's pure and pretty snow to try to make her mind feel clear. She turned to her own box, trying to think of rain instead. She imagined the clouds gathering above the tiny people, thought of times she'd spent staring out at downpours....

“Aeris tempero” she enunciated precisely, waving her wand over the little box of cultists. For a moment, she thought she had succeeded, for rain was indeed streaking down the pane at the front of the box. However, when she inspected it more closely, she realised the tiny people had not been disturbed in their worship of the strange instrument man, and that her rain had failed to reach them. She turned to see how Anthony had faired, smiling at his comment about pepper.

“No indeed, and I shouldn't imagine watching the rain running down the windows – mine's awfully two dimensional” she commented, inspecting his box and turning her own to show him. “I daresay you've caused some of their picnics to become dreadfully over seasoned,” she added, unable to help a smile at the thought, “And the little man on the blue blanket is sneezing. Gosh, these are fascinating. Imagine having this instead of a doll's house. Not that you had either, I suppose. I just mean... dolls only ever do as much as you imagine, whereas this seems like something else. I wonder how it's done....”

When Effie had first started at Sonora, she had been conscious of straying away from what her etiquette lessons had taught her, wishing she could stick to the practise dialogues verbatim so as to be sure of saying all the right things. They had seemed safe. However, over the years, that idea had seemed less reassuring and more restricting. She had always treasured the idea of falling in love before marriage – something her mother encouraged but never explained how to achieve. In the novels she read, people shared their thoughts and their memories with each other. They got to know each other in a way the people in etiquette practise scripts failed to do. She still viewed etiquette as important, of course, and there were certain situations where there was a precise set of lines to be followed – the correct way to offer, accept and decline an invitation, for example. Reading of novels had not made her wish to dispense with what etiquette had taught her but rather served as an adjunct to it. Etiquette tackled how to respond to a marriage proposal – novels perhaps taught how to secure one. And, as she thought over her etiquette lessons, she reasoned that it had not been forbade to speak of subjects outside those lines, so long as sensitive subjects were handled sensitively, or better still avoided. Novels gave her the permission she felt she needed to try to get to know boys, and she had been trying to put this into practise more often. She wasn't sure quite how knowing that she liked snow at Christmas or had played with dolls as a child were going to transform Anthony Carey's feelings for her but, contrary to her first year self, it felt more pleasant and comfortable than sticking to nothing but formalities. And it wasn't as if they were dark and terrible family secrets or things he could hold against her. It just allowed him to know her a little better.

13 Effie Arbon Oh, what's the worst that could happen? 238 Effie Arbon 0 5

Anthony Carey

October 23, 2014 7:51 PM

Anything can end in disaster. Anything. by Anthony Carey

White Christmases were an ideal Anthony was familiar with – they featured prominently on any number of the cards members of his family had sent and received, and Arnold was fond of talking about the Christmas party in his first year, where Preston and Sara Stratford had apparently met and Arnold himself had nearly frozen to death protecting Fae from disreputable people – or something like that, Arnold wasn’t really good at telling stories that didn’t feature Quidditch maneuvers. It had still been a Christmas party, though, or at least a party in winter, and the snow had added to the scene somehow, enough for even his brother to remember it specifically rather than just the fact that it was cold in Connecticut in winter.

“The two do go together,” he agreed with Effie. “We don’t get the real thing at home, but we conjure some up for parties every now and then.” He remembered his mother showing him the ballroom with enchanted snow falling from its ceiling once when he was very small; he had tried to catch it, but it had been designed to dissolve into thin air well above the heads of adults, putting it far out of his reach. They didn’t do that too often – parties were already expensive and complicated enough to pull off, as Mother always said, without going over the top – but it had been done a few more times since he’d been old enough to know to not just stand and stare at it or try to jump for it, too, though not this past season.

He didn’t comment on it, but the word ‘romance’ reminded him that he should ask Effie about the Ball soon. When he had thought about it over midterm, he had not been sure whether he should ask her or Francesca – he and Francesca could at least, in the worst-case scenario, talk about Quidditch, since next year he was going to be captain and she was almost sure to be his Assistant, but he’d thought, despite his cousin lacking the same kind of fascination with her that he’d for some reason had with Alicia Bauer, that Henry might want to ask Francesca, making it complicated – but Francesca had settled that by asking Jay. He liked Effie well enough – she had always seemed a little disconcertingly doll-like when they were younger, but last year she had done well in a crisis, and he’d gathered from Henry that she’d always been decent to his cousin, which improved his opinion of her a lot. And she was very pretty – not important, maybe, but he did notice it. He knew, too, from listening to Theresa talk and from Diana, of all people, securing a date last term and Francesca asking Jay at the Feast, that girls liked to have these things settled as soon as possible. He should just go ahead and ask, but…well, he liked to blame it on Arnold and Theresa’s experiences, but he guessed everyone in his position was probably nervous about asking people out, too.

He tried to put it out of his head as he worked on the charm. Afterward, he looked at Effie’s rain-glass with interest, wondering how she’d gotten that effect. “I was wondering that, too,” he said, looking back at his own, where they were reacting. “Maybe it’s…something similar to the transfiguration on chessmen?” Anthony was not a big chess player himself, but he had enjoyed the article on chessmen he’d read for Transfiguration. “There’s sets that talk, they act like they have a sense of self-preservation….” He’d hated that chess set. The point, of course, was to learn to deal with sending people out to do painful things no matter how much they argued or begged in order to achieve an objective – that was what was necessary to be a leader someday – but Anthony didn’t like it. At all. He preferred Father’s, which just moved when he spoke – they could nod or shake their heads if he asked them things, but they didn’t have faces and therefore couldn’t actually argue with him about which ones he should sacrifice. “I don’t think they have allergies, though, so this might be something else. Unless they're charmed somehow to react the way we'd think they would....” He thought about it for a second, but couldn't decide. "I'm sorry, I'm rambling. My great-grandmother used to have a little holiday village almost like this, but they just...did the same things over and over, you know, though I don't know what they would have done if one of us had tried to change their weather."

0 Anthony Carey Anything can end in disaster. Anything. 0 Anthony Carey 0 5

Effie Arbon

October 26, 2014 2:25 AM

What a cheery outlook by Effie Arbon

“That sounds lovely,” she smiled, when Anthony mentioned they sometimes used enchanted snow for parties. She had seen such things, the way it dissolved in the air before it could cause any damage to the hairstyles and frocks of the guests, or make a hazard of the dance floor. It was a very beautiful effect, though she felt it was something of a tease to see the snow fall and never feel it or see it settle.

“I find your speculations interesting,” she said, shaking her head when Anthony felt the need to apologise for pondering the workings of the little boxes. “I had considered the possibility that it was related to the development potion for photographs but... well, look who handed them out,” she stated, dropping her voice a little, “I don't think she's ever quite truly given up performing. Only now we're the audience.” Professor Olivers' classes tended towards the absurd and dramatic. If she couldn't have the students doing something strange she was usually presenting them with something to wonder at. Effie couldn't imagine the Charms professor designing many classes that would require her to seek her colleagues' help to produce her desired effects.

“Would you have a chance to find out?” Effie queried, regarding the little mountain scene. Anthony had used the past tense but she didn't know whether that was due to some accident having befallen the little village or the great-grandmother. Or perhaps both were past, in that the grandmother had died leaving the scene to a branch of the family Anthony no longer had much contact with.

She turned her attention back to her project, casting the counter charm. It worked easily as she hadn't had much rain to begin with. Besides which, she felt her conversation with Anthony was... if not anything approaching intimate then at least friendly. She could settle quite happily for friendly, for now. Her gloomy, cloud-laden feeling was therefore dispelling somewhat, although there was the ever present worry of Araceli. It occupied her mind even when she wasn't actively thinking about it, this constant feeling of things not being settled and not being alright. It was getting to the point where she almost didn't notice it; that mildly stressed was just her baseline emotion at present. It was like a radio that had been left on so long you ceased to notice it and did not regard the room as noisy until someone turned it off and you suddenly realised how quiet it was without it. Except, thus far, there had been no off switch for this... She would have to discuss it with Amity, as there was a good possibility that Chaslyn would make a suitable friend for her sister, and she was sure her friend would not be above giving the two a little nudge in the right direction. Anthony, she thought, would also be a good person to solicit advice from. Henry was still Henry – it was clear things were not easy for him but he was still here and functioning and not disgracing his family. She felt a lot of that had to do with Anthony but it was not a subject that was easily brought up.

“Aeris tempero,” she cast, focussing her thoughts on the centre of the box, trying to give more shape to her rain clouds than she'd managed previously. A dark formation appeared above the heads of the revellers, right in the centre, and large raindrops began to fall. Too large. The rain that fell was the size it would be in Effie's world. It was also only falling right in the middle, though this time at least there was a three dimensional element to it. The crowd parted around the freak rainstorm, shrieking and pointing.

“Meteolojinx recanto,” she cast. The rain, for the most part stopped, mostly from her desire to get the task right, rather than her wish to save tiny little cultists from the menace of giant raindrops. The clouds remained and were eyed suspiciously by the miniature people below. They seemed to be considering moving back into the centre, when a lone drop fell. They shielded themselves against the alarmingly large splash.

“Did you find a non-condiment related way to resolve the scale issue?” she queried of Anthony, “I know they're cultists but I feel that a flash flood of giant raindrops is still more than they deserve. Besides, I'll probably be marked down for getting the size wrong.”

13 Effie Arbon What a cheery outlook 238 Effie Arbon 0 5

Anthony

October 26, 2014 9:08 PM

On the bright side, I get lots of pleasant surprises by Anthony

“I guess it is one of the perks of the position,” Anthony said of their Charms teacher. It was hard to imagine someone becoming a professor without at least being very comfortable in front of an audience – a shy person would have trouble just performing in front of an audience of teenagers, he thought – and most of them most likely, even if it wasn’t their main reason for becoming teachers, liked it. “Pictures do react a little to magic, if you poke them with a wand, though, so you might be right…they could be images put onto something?” He squinted at some of his through the falling pepper. “It’s too bad Professor Olivers probably wouldn’t be pleased if we got far enough off task to try to take them out and see what they’re made of,” he said, wondering a second later if opening the boxes was even possible. He would have sealed them as securely as possible before giving them to teenagers to play with, but then, their magic could get through to the figures, so he wasn’t sure about that.

“Most likely,” he said of finding the old village. “I’m sure it’s still around somewhere - it’s just been a while since it was put out. Christmas isn’t as much of a big deal as it was now that most of us are getting older….” He shrugged. “A lot will probably come back out when the next bunch is the right age to enjoy it,” he said.

When the next bunch came at all, anyway. One of his cousins had children, but since they lived on the other side of the ocean, they were not very relevant to family decorating. Arnold and Fae showed no inclination to have children yet, and Anthony wondered if they ever would. It might make another mess of inheritance if they did, considering that Arnold was older than Anthony and only disqualified for being a twin, but Anthony didn’t know if anyone really cared enough anymore to try it. It would likely be most of another century, between his father and grandfather, before Anthony was in any position to wield much power, much less be overthrown by the next generation and whoever chose to back a member of it. There was little point in planning that far ahead; almost anything could happen by then. There was no accurately predicting that much of the future, not in that level of detail.

Anthony concentrated on just tiny snowflakes. Mist gathering into clouds, gathering into drops, freezing and splitting into tiny, tiny white flecks of ice. Unconsciously, he drew his arm back as he attempted the spell again, as though the wand could see and this would alter its perspective, but it didn’t work; instead, tiny snowflakes streamed from the tip of his wand over his desk, where they began to melt.

“Possibly,” he said, distracted by this, as Effie mentioned the points she might be deduced for over-sized rain. “I think I got the scale more or less right – just thinking about – tiny, that’s, all I can think to call it – but, um....” He cast a drying charm on his desk. “Then I started thinking about perspective and messed up the wand movement,” he finished. “Let me try that again….”

He was annoyed with himself – that was a stupid way to mess up a spell. He was supposed to be well beyond ever making a movement with his wand hand that he did not mean to make, whether his wand was in that hand or not, but especially when it was. He shook his head, trying not to think about it, and then tried one more time.

“There,” he said happily a moment later, snow now falling from the cloud onto the music-goers. Some looked up; one took his cloak off to put it around the little female figure with him and pulled the hood up over her head. “It’s more of a flurry than a blizzard, but it’s a start. Here’s hoping she doesn’t want us to work the weather of the whole classroom before the end of the week,” he said, joking but also really hoping that. It would take a lot of work to get to that level by then even if Professor Skies didn't do anything extra-interesting to the classroom. “Meteolojinx recanto,” he added, and was relieved to find stopping the weather a little easier than starting it had been, though he was sure that, too, would have been harder in a proper-sized situation, or maybe even just one he hadn't conjured up himself. "I suppose we'll have to start them up again to show Professor Olivers, so we still have at least one chance left to get it right."

0 Anthony On the bright side, I get lots of pleasant surprises 0 Anthony 0 5

Effie

October 27, 2014 6:54 AM

That is good, I suppose by Effie

“I think they look a little too three dimensional,” she mused, as Anthony peered into the box, glad at his interest in examining the figures as a slight blush had crept over her cheeks at him complimenting her idea. She was quite sure her theory was wrong in this case but it was flattering that he thought it worth considering.

“Probably not. It might be simpler to just ask,” she added, when he noted that their professor might not be best pleased at them dismantling her props.

She was glad to hear that the village was still intact, if buried in an attic somewhere. It sounded like a fascinating piece and she couldn't really understand how anyone could be too old for a such a thing, or for Christmas decorations in general. Wasn't that the point of Christmas? To take out all the familiar trinkets one remembered from one's youth? She was sure she would still have been quite enamoured of the little village, had it been in her family, but perhaps it was due to female sentimentality. She could see how a young man like Anthony, learning to shoulder the business of being a patriarch, could see himself as too old for such things, although it made her feel rather sorry for him.

“You'll have to do some research when you have the chance and let me know,” she smiled.

She turned back to her own box, taking on his idea of thinking small. Normally, she searched her own mind when she visualised things but she supposed that perhaps everything in it was a little large, and she should focus on the world inside the box instead. She tried to imagine correctly proportioned rain falling on the tiny little people, aiming her wand carefully. She couldn't see any clouds in the tiny sky but it began to drizzle, covering all of the ground within the box, at the right size. She smiled to herself, even though it was only a very light scattering of rain. A few of the cultists turned their heads upwards, their thrall broken by the shower. Some pulled on strange shiny coats. A few at the back shrugged and wandered away.

“It looks like I need more than that to snap them out of their trance but at least I made it rain all over,” she commented, turning to see how Anthony's scene was progressing.

“I think a flurry is suitable enough,” she consoled, quite glad he hadn't managed to conjure up a blizzard, as she was sure his tiny little audience would not have enjoyed it. As it was, they were behaving rather sweetly, some watching the snow, a man here or there being chivalrous towards his date. “If you can lower the ground temperature it might settle more, if you want to be able to show more snow,” she added, thinking of the days back home when it started to snow but disappointingly melted when it touched down, “but that might be much more complicated. It's a related type of weather but it does seem like doing two things at once.

“She does like to pursue a topic for a while,” she commented, when Anthony joked about them working on the classroom's weather. “Perhaps we'd best bring umbrellas this week, just in case.”

13 Effie That is good, I suppose 238 Effie 0 5

Anthony

October 30, 2014 12:02 PM

It could be worse by Anthony

Anthony was a little surprised to hear Effie move away from her own theory almost at once, but nodded. “I thought at first that they might be – papier-mâché figurines or something like that, photographs – bent up somehow – but on second thought, I think you’re right,” he said. “I’m not sure that potion would allow them to move in all the directions.” Figures in pictures could go backward or to the sides, but not forward, while the figures in the boxes seemed able to move however they wanted.

He blinked, surprised, at the idea of just asking how the figures had been animated in their environment. “That is definitely an option,” he agreed again. “If I had to guess, I’d guess it was Transfiguration, but asking would be a lot easier than…any of the other options I had considered.”

Which was a little embarrassing. There were times when just asking the person who had information to tell it to him wasn’t the right thing to do – he had learned about that; if the person with the information had a good reason to lie to him, was someone he could not approach without risking life, limb, or reputation, or the lives, limbs, and reputations of his family, if the person was in a situation where it would actually take longer to go to them and get the information, or if the person with the information was someone he really needed to conceal something from and could never owe a real favor, then he ought to seek the information some other way, and if the person with the information was a known liar, then he ought to check his source once he had it – but none of those criteria applied to asking a teacher a question after class. Asking teachers questions about spells was a completely acceptable thing to do – unless the spells were Dark, anyway, and Anthony didn’t have much of an interest in that kind of magic anyway. Arthur could be their token dark-shade-of-gray wizard if they had to have one to keep up appearances once Grandfather died, leaving Anthony and Arnold to present respectable faces to the world. He would be amazed if this fell into that category, either, though, so there was really no reason why he should have not thought of just asking sooner.

Anthony smiled when Effie suggested researching and reporting back on Great-Grandmother’s village. “I will,” he said.

He could either do that, actually report back, and ask her to the Ball then, probably somewhere a little less crowded than class, or else get that over with at the end of class now. He didn't think either of them was a bad plan, it was just a question of which was less uncomfortable. Anthony wished, not for the first time, that he really was as goal-oriented and unemotional as they were all supposed to act, but he didn’t think it really happened for anyone. Arthur came closer to the supposedly proper level of detachment than most of them, or at least looked like he did, but if anything ever hurt Arnold in a way Arnold didn’t want to be hurt, Anthony imagined that shades of gray would not even come into it....

“Well done,” Anthony said, looking at the drizzle over the event in Effie’s box.

“I could freeze the water in the ground, if there is any,” he said slowly, thinking about it. Earth had water in it, he knew; when he helped his mother in her garden, the soil they turned over could be moist. “Or cooling charms on the minerals….” Of course, if he got the scale wrong on drawing the heat out of them, then he thought he might set the whole thing on fire. That wouldn't be good or look good, so he didn’t think that was the way to go. “But it might not be, er, real earth, so they might just have to settle for a flurry. Maybe it’ll cool down on its own if it snows long enough.” It was ice falling on their ground; surely it had to cool it down sooner or later.

“Yes, but shrink them and hide them until we see if they’re really necessary,” he said about the umbrellas. "If she wasn't already planning it, we wouldn't want to be the ones giving her ideas...."

0 Anthony It could be worse 0 Anthony 0 5

Annabelle Pierce, Pecari

November 01, 2014 2:32 PM

I won't rain on your parade by Annabelle Pierce, Pecari

Annabelle was a little miffed at Annette. This was not because Annette had somehow managed to secure a date and she hadn't. Nor was it because Annette wasn't trying to convince Adam they should be more-than-friends and seemed perfectly fine with a friend-date. This, in fact, was somewhat relieving. Truthfully, if Adam and Annette did hook up, it would put the pressure on Annabelle to find a nice boy to go with, too, and she did not really see that happening given the limited supply of them here at Sonora, so she was quite selfishly glad Annette was not taking full advantage of her situation, though no doubt Mother would harp on both of them for that later.

No, Annabelle was miffed because Annette wasn't as excited about the upcoming ball as Annabelle thought she should be, and having a date, Annabelle thought she should be over the moon, even if it was just as friends. But, no, Annette didn't even want to talk about it. It was very frustrating.

They arrived at Charms class together, as they always did, but then split up, as they often did for class. That was mostly to continue working on breaking their magical dependence on each other rather than because they weren't currently happy with each other. Still, it would be nice to maybe talk with someone else who didn't mind discussing the ball for a class period.

She wasn't quite sure what Lucille Carey's stance on the whole subject was, but there was an empty chair next to her and, as a Carey, Annabelle hoped she'd at least be willing to discuss it once they finished their lesson. Politeness would probably at least get her an answer to finding out if any of Lucille's male relatives (well, the ones fifth year and older, anyway) were still unattached, if nothing else. If Annette had a date, even a friend-date, Annabelle thought she might at well at least scope out the rest of the field to see if she could secure herself one as well.

The class, though, proved somewhat more diverting than she'd expected it to be for a first class back from midterm. Weather charms were definitely going to be an interesting challenge, even if just cast into a little cube. She glanced over to her sister and caught Annette looking back. They nodded to each other, accepting and offering silent moral support, which was pretty much all they needed at this point to be able to cast at their full potential, so long as they didn't have any solid barriers like walls or doors between them.

Then Annabelle picked up her wand and regarded her little enclosed scene. It looked like an open street between buildings built close to each other on either side of it. People lined either side of the street and three colorful floats cycled down the street, starting on one side of the cube, disappearing at the opposite side, then reappearing back where they began. The little people on the floats threw out small pieces of candy and the people on the edges of the street scrambled to catch them. For a minute or two, Annabelle just watched the progression, enjoying the tiny parade almost as much as the tiny spectators.

She showed it to Lucille as her chosen roommate asked about it. "I've got a little New Years parade, I think," she said as she examined the little coffee shop Lucille had been given. "I'm not quite sure what to do to them that wouldn't be heartless. I mean, raining on a parade? That's just cruel. And giving them fog would make it hard to see their floats. Anything else would be hard to see that I actually did anything."

1 Annabelle Pierce, Pecari I won't rain on your parade 246 Annabelle Pierce, Pecari 0 5

Lucille

November 01, 2014 9:29 PM

I'd appreciate that by Lucille

“True,” Lucille said when her neighbor - one of the Pierce girls; she felt a little bad about not being too sure which was which - said it was hard to pick a good weather change for her parade. The best weather for outdoor events was almost always the bland kind: not too sunny, not too cloudy, not windy or raining…. ”I was going to let it snow a little on mine, since they have hot drinks and there’s not really any weather you should have inside. It might make yours pretty? New Year, winter, snow….” Theresa and Alex had both been fascinated by the snow at her house before; her family lived high enough in the mountains that they usually got some every year where her cousins both lived further south and at much lower altitudes and almost never saw any at all.

She looked at the floats. “Or you might make it – breezy. Not windy enough to tangle them up, but enough to make some of them dance,” she suggested.

On second thought, dance was probably a bad word to use at school right now. It didn’t matter much to her – Jay had acquired a first-dance date at least, Anthony should have no problems, and no one else in her family actually required a partner, so with Evan no longer at school and Mal seeming, after the way he’d spent the holidays staring blankly off into space whenever anyone discussed it in front of him, unlikely to use the opportunity even to amuse himself, never mind cause trouble, her whole interest was in the pretty dresses; she was going to enjoy getting dolled up and seeing what everyone else had to wear even if the only people she got to dance with were related to her by either blood or impending marriage – but she knew she was in a minority with that opinion, and might press on a nerve if her neighbor didn’t have a date or many prospects for one. She knew the year beneath hers was not as bad as some of the years were, but there were still more girls than boys and she didn’t really expect Henry to get a date or for anyone to want him for one. He would most likely spend the evening doing what she thought he had spent most of last fall doing, which was sitting in his room and reading. Maybe, though, Annabelle-or-Annette had a date, or at least might not immediately follow the association of the word dance the same way Lucille did. Some people liked other kinds of dancing, and others might just not go off on tangents like that at all.

0 Lucille I'd appreciate that 0 Lucille 0 5