Time to prove myself on Charms

Professor Olivers

November 08, 2014 2:29 AM

Time to extinguish the lights. [III, IV, V years] by Professor Olivers

It was nearing the end of the term and Florence was aware of the buzz of the Midsummer ball. She herself hadn’t attended a real ball in years. She didn’t count Sonora balls since she was only a chaperone and not an attendee. She enjoyed everything about a ball: the dress robes, the potential for romance, the food, the dancing—all of it. As a half-blood, she didn’t have many opportunities to attend fancy balls like her pure-blood colleagues and friends. But it wasn’t something she regretted or was bitter about. She was glad to be on the sidelines for these students and watch them have a good time. Florence was eager to get back to Chicago and be reunited with her loved ones, particularly Nick.

Before the ball, however, CATS and exams were approaching and Florence had done her best to cover all that she could. In the Charms classroom today, there were lanterns floating high, some at a very high altitude, others floating relatively low. The lowest lantern, however, was a few inches above her head and she stood at 5’8”. Her taller intermediate students would still have to reach if they wanted to pluck it out of the air with their hand. The floating lanterns added a gentle aura to the classroom with the candles flickering within their confines. It made the room look a little more magical than usual.

Once everyone arrived, she shut the door and began handing out a pop quiz. “Put away your books and your wands. I’m allowing you to use your own quill for this quiz, but if I see any cheating you will be penalized severely. When you are finished, come up here and put it on my desk.” By now her students should know she was not to be taken lightly. Though she could be flamboyant and outlandish with her clothes, she was strict and didn’t tolerate nonsense. Hardly any of the professors here at Sonora tolerated nonsense, and for that she was glad.

There were five questions on the quiz about Charms. She hoped they didn’t take too long over it, especially her fifth-years. Once everyone had turned in their quiz, she smiled at them. “That wasn’t too bad, was it? We’re going to be reviewing one of the first charms we learned this term: the Descending Charm. Who can tell me what the incantation is for that?” Once she heard the correct answer, she nodded.

“Yes, Descendo. Easy enough to remember. There isn’t much theoretical work to do for this charm, but I will expect you to know how it works. Let’s put the spell to use. As you can see, there are floating lanterns all over the room at different heights. Fifth-years, work on bringing down the highest ones. Fourth years, the second-highest, and third years the lowest, though you can, of course, challenge yourself. Once you have brought down your lantern, extinguish it and bring it to me. Afterwards you can study with a partner or two for your upcoming exams.”

Florence went to her desk and picked up the quizzes. She hoped to hand them back graded to her students by the end of the class period, and she would as long as no catastrophes distracted her.

OOC: Any questions, tag Professor Olivers. Little fires from crashing lanterns is OK, but no enormous flames as Florence would have put out the fires quickly.

Subthreads:

Who's afraid of the dark? by Malcolm Carey, Pecari

Time to prove myself by Brandon Carey, Pecari with Liliana Bannister, Pecari, Brandon Carey

Bored, but what else is new? by Leo Princeton, Crotalus with Isaac Douglas, Crotalus, Leo Princeton

0 Professor Olivers Time to extinguish the lights. [III, IV, V years] 0 Professor Olivers 1 5

Malcolm Carey, Pecari

November 08, 2014 11:32 AM

Who's afraid of the dark? by Malcolm Carey, Pecari

Now that they were almost close enough to count as part of the foreseeable future, Mal thought he was finally starting to feel a little anxious about his CATS. He would find himself biting his lip when teachers mentioned that this or that was likely to be on them, or reading material twice in his textbooks just to be sure he remembered it. Once, he had even looked through the book of practice problems his mother had given him over the holidays, though he had yet to do any of the problems within it. The world was boring, but it was not yet that boring, not quite. There was still Ball gossip to listen to, after all.

That could, on good days, be almost interesting. He actually found himself wanting to see who his roommate was sitting with and how Adam’s harem was looking at him. Adam suddenly taking an interest in Annette Pierce had been unexpected, considering how he already had two girls, and Mal liked the unexpected; Mal had been disappointed to see Francesca and James’ association of convenience failing to produce drama, he had hoped Henry or Anthony would prove into her and just make it a marvelous disaster, but while that, so far, hadn’t happened, he would settle for a gigantic catfight, or at least the whole situation existing because Ginny was secretly dating Gemma Bennett and had chosen the Ball as the right time to reveal this to everybody….

Most likely that wasn’t the explanation, but not knowing was what made the Ball situations interesting. It was going to be as good as a play, and Mal liked plays.

He did not like pop quizzes, but he didn’t find this one all that bad and handed it in quickly. He stared blankly at Professor Olivers, though, when she said they were going to review the Descending Charm. The third years, he was pretty sure, could do this one, and wasn’t the second half of the year supposed to be totally dedicated to getting his year ready for CATS?

Admittedly, he couldn’t remember how it worked, just that it did. He thought of most magic as willpower, like the way they had to use mental images in Transfiguration: he wanted it to come down, so it did. He did add ‘theory of motion charms’ to his mental list of subjects to review later, since he was sure that would appear on the written portion of his CATS, and wondered for a moment if he should do that after he completed the spell today instead of just chatting and listening for drama….

Nah. He could study at any time, and had perfect opportunities in his dorm room, where gossip didn’t happen at all. He could have had a worse roommate, he guessed – in a lot of ways; he had a feeling that if he and Charles had shared a dormitory, the whole school would have banded together to kill them by now – but that was not one of the things Adam was much good for, at least with him. He had to have some aptitude for it, to spend so much time with so many girls even if one of them was an Aladren, but Mal didn’t know how to deal with other males well enough to engage in the most delightful sport with him.

Now, though, he had to engage with a lantern. He looked up, craning his neck to see the higher ones. They weren’t in perfectly even lines, so he tried to figure out which of the fifth year targets was closest to him.

"I had better not get a crick in my neck from this," he remarked to another student, then pointed his wand at the one he wanted. "Descendo," he tried, squinting as he willed it to float smoothly - and quickly; when he needed to keep his eyes open, he always needed to blink a lot worse than usual, and he thought breaking eye contact with something he was descending wasn't the best idea even when it didn't happen to be on fire - down to his other hand, which he extended in the same direction as his wand, even though he was sure this made him look ridiculous.

0 Malcolm Carey, Pecari Who's afraid of the dark? 0 Malcolm Carey, Pecari 0 5

Brandon Carey, Pecari

November 08, 2014 12:52 PM

Time to prove myself by Brandon Carey, Pecari

Brandon hadn’t told anyone, not least because he didn’t want them to pity him any more than he wanted them to write home and snitch on him, but he was nervous about his end of the year exams. The magical part would, he was sure, be fine – he was good with a wand, and most of his books were obliging enough to help him be even better by including images as well as words, which were still not his strong suit but which he refused to let Diana help him with anymore – but he had always heard that the higher in the school you went, the more writing there was to do on exams, and his writing was still, even after all the work he had been forced to put into improving it, his weakest academic skill.

It was just stupid. He was a wizard. He could do magic. He demonstrated that to everyone every day. He did magic even when he didn’t have to or it didn’t make things that much easier, just because it was fun. What did it matter if he wasn’t that great with explaining what he knew? Wasn’t doing it the important part? Professor Skies had said he wasn’t stupid when she called him out on not being good with her Transfiguration charts, and while he hadn’t believed her then, it made more sense to him now. He was a better wizard than Henry, who had read the children’s dictionary when they were little and could spell whatever he wanted without trouble. A wizard who learned to cast spells properly seemed a lot smarter to him than one who just read about them, but a lot of the time, it seemed like the rest of the world was determined to disagree just for spite.

He held out hope that he was wrong about how bad his exams were going to be, and that next year, once he proved to everyone that they had nothing to worry about just because he hadn’t had teachers for half of his second year and had happily avoided print every time he could get ‘round Jay for all that time, would be better. Because this year had been awful. Every time he almost thought about being in a good mood, it seemed like something else happened to make him want to hit things very hard all over again. Things like Professor Olivers giving them a pop quiz, which meant he didn’t even have time while studying to rehearse how he would write different things down. He groaned quietly, scrubbing the heels of his hands over his face, when he realized what was going on.

He was not one of the first students to finish, or even part of the middle group, and dug his wand and book back out of his bag and put them back on his desk with more force than he had to in his embarrassment after returning to his desk. When she asked for an incantation for the Descending Charm, he sat up quickly and called out, without bothering to raise his hand in his eagerness to show that he wasn’t stupid after her remark about the quiz, “Descendo.”

The staggered lanterns around the ceiling instantly began to make sense. He liked Professor Olivers, usually, because her classroom setups were the kind he worked well in – they would have been really distracting, as the lanterns had been during the pop quiz, but then she said what they were doing for the day and it had a reason for being there and he could interact with it instead of just being distracted by it and it was all good. Usually, but he would forgive the times it didn’t work that way as long as she didn’t give them any more pop quizzes this week.

Feeling a little mollified but still embarrassed about being one of the last to finish the quiz – which was not that unusual for him, but he never liked it – Brandon decided to be one of the students who stretched himself magically. Ignoring the nearest set of lanterns overhead, he concentrated on the next set up, the ones meant for the fourth years.

“Descendo,” he said clearly and firmly, pointing his wand straight at one. It gave a jerk, swayed, dropped maybe a foot – and then, before Brandon could start to panic about the thought of it just falling and landing on someone’s head and setting their hair on fire, stopped. “That was close,” he said, and looked around, wondering if someone had magically caught it or if he had done it himself or if the lanterns were just enchanted that way – not to fall below the level of the third year lanterns unless they were being charmed at that moment by a student? He squinted at it, sure it was now slowly starting to rise again.

0 Brandon Carey, Pecari Time to prove myself 0 Brandon Carey, Pecari 0 5

Liliana Bannister, Pecari

November 09, 2014 3:38 AM

Watching an admirable attempt. by Liliana Bannister, Pecari

Before Liliana’s affection for learning about Dark Arts and the weird creatures that made up the lessons, Charms had been her best subject. Now, however, she was doing marginally better in Defense since she was heaps more interested in it, but she was still doing well in Charms. So, when Professor Olivers announced a pop quiz Liliana wasn’t too unprepared and she answered the questions rather confidently. She wasn’t the very first to turn in her quiz nor was she amongst the first, but that was mainly because sometimes she had issues clearing her mind and focusing at the task on hand. She worked much better when it was hands on and that was one of the reasons she was much better at Sonora than she was when she’d been subject to private tutors at home. Transfiguration was a whole other story, but when she wasn’t in that class she didn’t really like to think about it.

However, despite how confident Liliana felt with Charms, she didn’t think she wanted to attempt the fourth year lesson. She still was struggling in Transfiguration and until she could bring that grade up she really didn’t want to lose points in any of her other classes. Yet as she prepared to start working on her assignment, she noticed that Brandon Carey, fellow third year and Pecari, was targeting a lantern higher than all the other third years. She paused to watch him, wondering if he would be able to pull it off. At first it seemed to be working but then it began to make its way up to its original place again.

“That was bold,” she said, in a teasing voice. Though she didn’t really talk to him much they had been on the Pecari Quidditch team together as first years and that was enough for Liliana to start talking to him again as though they were old friends.

She turned her attention to one of the third year level lanterns that no one else had started to work on yet and tilted her head a little so that she could better look at the light. She thought the arrangement of lanterns very pretty. “Aren’t these lights enchanting?” she asked him. They were exactly the sort of thing she wanted for her bat mitzvah party and she made a mental note of it all to tell her grandmother about it. Since she had been cut off from the rest of the world while at Sonora for a whole semester last year she still hadn’t had her bat mitzvah and after having talked with her parents and grandmother about it over last year’s winter break they had decided to hold it the summer after her third year at Sonora despite that she would be fourteen by the time that rolled around.

OOC: You can go ahead and assume that Brandon is familiar with Liliana as she isn't a particularly shy sort of person and would have been at the very least friendly with him even if they aren't friends since they are the same year and had Qudditch practice together their first year.

10 Liliana Bannister, Pecari Watching an admirable attempt. 274 Liliana Bannister, Pecari 0 5

Brandon Carey

November 09, 2014 4:53 PM

Making another one by Brandon Carey

Brandon looked over at Liliana Bannister when she commented on his attempt and grinned. “Fortune favors the bold,” he quoted with a shrug.

That was a line of thought Brandon thought the elders in his family would discourage, but he remembered enough of the stories from the family history to know that they had not always all been models of caution and propriety, either. Which was one of the many reasons it frustrated him that they seemed to expect him and his siblings to always be that way now. If their ancestors had taken the advice they gave them, the family wouldn’t even remotely resemble itself, and they were, as far as he could tell, pretty powerful and well off, so why would they want their descendants to act like a bunch of stuffed suits? Or stuffed academic’s robes, he thought sourly, remembering why he and Liliana likely didn’t know each other better after all this time. He had not yet forgiven the family for making him give up Quidditch.

“They’re definitely enchanted,” he said about the lanterns. He wasn’t really sure if that was witty or not. It amused him, but he thought wordplay was one of those things that worked better with people who were better with books than he was. He knew what he would say to her next if they were at a party – something about how she somehow put the lanterns to shame by being more enchanting, or he was enchanted, or something – but it felt really weird to contemplate doing that in just a normal situation. Maybe if he ran into her at the ball and they had done something with the lights.

“Here I go again,” he said instead for now, pointing his wand back at the same lantern again, more determined than ever to bring it down now, knowing he would look really stupid now that someone had definitely seen him try if it turned out that he could not succeed. That was the fun thing about raising the stakes: once they were up, it was do or die. If he didn’t perform, he’d look really stupid. He didn’t want to look really stupid, so he had to perform. Simple as that.

“Descendo,” he cast once more, imagining the lantern sliding toward him along an invisible string. He tried not to be too surprised or looked too pleased with himself when – after another beginning jerk; he narrowed his eyes and concentrated harder, repeating the incantation – it began to act just as though it were on that string. And to move faster, and faster –

And collided with another lantern. He winced, and his was lost. He bit his lip.

“It beats nothing,” he said cheerily, hiding his frustration over not performing the more advanced task perfectly. “Maybe the next time. How are you doing?” he asked, looking up to see if any lanterns had come down yet. He thought this should mostly just be a study - by which he meant 'gossip and mean-sprited magical pranks' - period since they had already covered this spell once, but some people were as bad with a wand as he was with a book, so there was no telling how long it would take all the lanterns to come down.

0 Brandon Carey Making another one 275 Brandon Carey 0 5

Leo Princeton, Crotalus

November 11, 2014 1:24 PM

Bored, but what else is new? by Leo Princeton, Crotalus

All around him, individuals were finding their match for the ball, going either as friends or as dates. There was something about school balls that suggested romance, but Leo found it all disgusting. It was all particularly disgusting because he still did not have a date. He had found out that his room-mate had asked Nellie to the ball, the one witch whom he had counted on to wait for him. Worse yet, she hadn’t refused him; in fact, from what he’d heard, she’d been more than happy to go with Tristan. That meant leaving Leo out in the cold. Lately he had been feeling very lonely, more so than usual. He had tried to put it aside as a stupid feeling, but it was difficult to do so for too long.

Now that Nellie had abandoned him, Leo had no friends left and it was all very irritating. He couldn’t understand why that was so; he wasn’t rude to anyone except muggle-borns, was good-looking, intelligent and could talk his way out of anything. His cousins all had dates, putting Leo to shame and leaving him alone as well: Rupert had that blasted muggle-born – a bad move, in his opinion – Adam had a fellow Quidditch team-mate – an interesting development – and Charlotte had Emrys, though nobody was surprised at that. His oldest brother had once gone to the ball with two dates, and Leo had imagined himself living that sort of lifestyle once he had arrived at Sonora. It was not to be, however, much to his disappointment. Instead, Leo had decided not to attend the ball, or at least go if he was expected to and leave early. He didn’t even enjoy balls very much anyway.

As a result of his lacking social life, his marks had been improving. It was funny how well he could do in school if he only applied himself. Charms was one of the easier courses and Leo found today to be an easy class. The pop quiz was uncalled for on Professor Olivers’s part, but he filled it out quickly, stumbling over only one of the questions. After the quiz was finished, Professor Olivers mentioned the charm they were going to review. It was a remedial lesson today, but Leo didn’t mind it; that meant easy points.

Olivers was daring to light real fires for her Intermediate class to put out. He had heard a rumour that she’d made her Advanced students walk through real fire once. She was a dangerous professor and as soon as Leo was old enough, he was going to drop this class. He didn’t want to get caught in the Hospital Wing because of her and he was certain that was going to happen in Advanced. For the practical work, Leo chose a relatively high lantern. He wielded his wand and pointed it at the specific floating lantern, wondering if there was a way to bring all the lanterns down at once or to levitate them like this all at the same time. “Descendo.”

Easy. The lantern floated down a little faster than he’d meant it, but Leo was able to catch it before it hit the desk and he put out the flame. “That was quick,” he said to no one in particular. He then handed the lantern to Professor Olivers and made his way back to his desk.

He pulled out his stack of notes which were in a couple different languages. Languages came easy to Leo, having been raised bilingual with an English father and a French mother, and over the years he had learnt Italian and was on his way to learn Spanish. The particular notes he had taken for Charms were in a mix of English, French and Italian with doodles of Latin phrases here and there which he scribbled when he was bored in class. He spread these notes out in front of them to review and sighed as he leant his chin against his hand, his blue eyes scanning them, bored. He began to doodle a dragon on the corner of his parchment, a cartoon with soft edges and loads of fire coming out of its mouth.

0 Leo Princeton, Crotalus Bored, but what else is new? 0 Leo Princeton, Crotalus 0 5

Liliana Bannister

November 14, 2014 9:57 PM

Impressive. by Liliana Bannister

Liliana laughed at Brandon’s attempt at a joke and turned to cast her own spell. She had made sure to not to choose one of the lowest lanterns since that would have been too easy but also not one that seemed to be targeted towards the fourth or fifth years. However, as she did so, she spotted the collision he had created out of the corner of her eye. She couldn’t help it, a little giggle slipped out and Brandon’s good attitude about it all made her face break out into a full-fledged grin. Her own spell suffered a little bit when his lantern had crashed, so instead of coming down it only slightly wobbled but Liliana wasn’t too worried-- as long as she concentrated enough during a spell it tended to work out well for her. (Transfiguration being the only exception and a subject that no matter how much she liked to ignore still popped up into the forefront of her mind all the time)

“It beats nothing,” he said as Liliana shook her head and cast descendo again, holding her wand steadily and following the lantern’s descent with her eyes as if it were her gaze that was doing the magic and the wand was only as added guidelines. “Maybe the next time,” he continued. “How are you doing?”

“I’m doing alright,” Liliana said, smiling as the lantern she had been working on made its way down to her. She reached out and caught it when it came close enough. “I probably should have tried at one of the higher ones like you but…” she trailed off and shrugged her shoulders. “Let’s just say I need all the good marks I can get to make up for the Dreaded Class.” She wasn’t entirely certain if the whole school knew about her academic short comings or not but she’d made enough of a mess enough times that she was certain that in her year at least people would know to steer clear of being her partner in Transfiguration. Not that she blamed them.

Instead of extinguishing her lantern right away, Liliana set it down on the table in front of her and folded her arms so she could rest her head on it and look at the pretty light. Professor Olivers had, after all, only indicated that the end result of the day’s class would be to extinguish the lanterns and bring them up. She had never specifically said when she wanted that done nor that it would need to happen immediately so Liliana figured she might have a few minutes of wiggle room before needing to turn it in.

“It’s really quite a calming effect, I think,” she said. “I remember that my grandmother decorated the garden like this during her spring tea a few years ago. It was quite stunning. It looked like a thousand fairies were glowing just for us.” That particular tea stuck in Liliana’s memory not just because of the beautiful decorations but also because it had been the first one she had been allowed to attend as a guest.

However, as she sat there looking at the hypnotizing light she realized that if she spent too long looking at the light Olivers might think her incompetent and that it had taken her a long time to bring down a lower hanging lantern and then give her a bad mark so regrettably she stood up and extinguished the pretty flame. “It’s such a shame,” she said. “It was so beautiful.” She turned to turn in her lantern, her forest green robes flaring out a little to reveal the white and gold dress she had put on because gold was one of Pecari’s colors. Ever since their team had lost to Aladren the last term, Liliana had found a way to incorporate gold into her wardrobe because despite losing she was still proud to be a Pecari and she hated brown. Even though she had been at Sonora for over two years, she still could not get over that one of their colors was brown. Brown. An involuntary shudder ran through her spine every time she thought of it.

When she returned, she pulled out her textbooks and notebooks and set them in front of her and opened them but she didn’t actually start studying. She wrinkled her nose at the pages and turned to Brandon instead. What she wanted to ask him was “Why didn’t you come out for Quidditch again this year?” What she actually asked him was “Can you believe that in two years we’ll be preparing for our CATS? It’s so weird.”

10 Liliana Bannister Impressive. 274 Liliana Bannister 0 5

Brandon

November 15, 2014 11:52 PM

Thank you! by Brandon

Brandon shrugged when Liliana justified her lantern choice. “Makes sense,” he said. “I’m half-hoping doing something harder will make up for some of my written work.” Which really wasn’t as bad as it had once been, but still wasn’t exactly his strength. “I mean, I get it all, writing about it’s just boring, you know?” he added, so she wouldn’t think he was stupid.

Being practical, though, looking to complete the assignment, get a good grade, and move on, that was a smart thing to do. Smarter than showing off. It actually worked. Now that he had started doing this, though, Brandon didn’t see a way to stop that wouldn’t mean losing face, and worse, losing face in front of a girl. So he kept aiming on that same lantern, determined to get the thing down and get it over with and get on with his day.

School, he had always heard, was supposed to be all about learning to control their powers. Anyone could do magic when emotionally upset, lashing out instinctively to crudely solve a problem, but a fully trained wizard could not only do magic while calm, but could always do exactly what he wanted to do, what he decided was best instead of what just…burst out. By that measure, Brandon guessed he was a half-trained wizard, because while he could do magic when he meant to and usually what he meant to, there was no doubt that he got more or less big effects depending on his state of mind. Total calm didn’t suit him, and neither did being angry, but a mix of frustration and determination could work out.

This time, it did. The lantern finally came to rest at his feet. Brandon grinned at Liliana, in a much better mood than he had been at the beginning of their conversation at the sight of his triumph. She didn’t, though, look very interested, instead talking about how pretty the lights were.

“Well, there’s plenty more still up there,” he pointed out as they extinguished their lamps. Brandon didn’t have the attention span to watch something like a light long enough to know if it was calming, so he was going to have to take her word for it that it worked. He found the levels of lanterns, and how some of them were moving now that people were casting spells on them, more distracting than calming. “And you can light your own in your room any time,” he added. “Or ask the elves, if you’re ever up late enough – or early enough – to catch any of them in the common room.” Brandon had stayed up all night once just to do that, just to say he had. He hadn’t gotten to say it much, though, as he’d spent the next day wandering around like an inferius, when he wasn’t dozing off during things like classes and meals. He was a person who needed his sleep, on his usual sleep schedule.

He was not looking forward to trying to study for the rest of class and was glad when Liliana brought up something else to talk about, even if it was sort of related to studying and was why he should have been studying whether he wanted to or not. “It – feels kind of weird to me that we’re not taking them already,” he admitted. “Since we’re in all our classes with the fifth years, you know, and in a lot of classes, we all do the same stuff, so it just seems like it’s going to be weird that they’re not here for our exams.” He shrugged. "'Course, they probably just hate our guts because we don't have to take CATS, and in two years, we'll be too busy hating the first years - the ones who're first years now - for not having to take CATS to think about that," he said. "Well - the first years except one. I don't guess I'll hate my sister just for having easier exams than I do." He was still, when he thought about it, a little mad about Diana getting a date to the ball and calling him childish when he got mad about it, but she was still Di. "Do you have brothers and sisters?" he asked, realizing he didn't know what seemed like a very essential fact about a person about his Housemate.

0 Brandon Thank you! 0 Brandon 0 5

Isaac Douglas, Crotalus

November 18, 2014 12:00 PM

Not much does change around here. by Isaac Douglas, Crotalus

As he took a seat in Charms, Isaac craned his neck to look at the tiers of floating lanterns overhead, wondering what, exactly, Professor Olivers had in mind for those. After almost three years of her classes, he had come to believe that while Professor Olivers enjoyed performance and appearances for their own sakes, she was much like his sister in that there was seldom only one reason for anything she did. Their type always had to make everything serve two purposes – he could never decide if that was efficient or just a desire to be deliberately, ostentatiously, excessively clever – and so everything was itself and also a performance at the same time.

With Alicia, this was usually relatively harmless – to him, anyway. His sister had probably ruined poor old Pierce’s life already and no doubt made substantial progress on Princeton’s, but Isaac assumed that everything she said was, at best, a truth so severely slanted that it might as well have been a lie, didn’t see that she had anything he wanted enough to bother trying to get it from her, and thought he had lived with her long enough that she would have to up her game by untold orders of magnitude to use her favorite manipulation tactic (pretending she really cared about the other person and just wanted to help them) on him successfully, and therefore didn’t bother doing things like trying to read much into the impressions conveyed by the style of her dress or how she wore her make-up. In fact, he found the whole business boring, enough that he even felt something closer to mild disgust toward the pretty girls of Crotalus when he noticed their efforts in those directions than it was to being impressed by or interested in them. With Professor Olivers, though, the game was at least moderately interesting and possibly, when fire was involved, perilous. What were they going to do with those lanterns? Long-range fire extinguishing charms? Making them fly without the air putting out the candles or the candles themselves setting anything else on fire? It might have made more sense to use paper lanterns for the fifth years if that was the case, but she could be playing it a tiny bit safe there. Those options were both also just fine-tunings of spells they already knew, but while he was new to Intermediates, that seemed like the kind of thing they might do so close to the end of the year, both to increase the skill of the third and fourth years and to review for the fifth years….

When Professor Olivers began talking after the pop quiz, it turned out that he’d been right about the general idea, wrong in all his guesses about the specifics, or very nearly – he suspected that not setting things on fire on the way down was an unspoken part of the assignment, but it wasn’t the primary objective. He was actually a little disappointed by how simple the defined task actually was. Reaching for objects and bringing them down was a useful skill to expand his range on, but it wasn’t as…finessed…as the other options he had imagined.

Still, easy tasks now meant the possibility of easy exams, which was what he wanted to see in a few weeks. Any momentary differences in opinion he held were obviously products of the library books being enchanted by Aladrens to imprint some of their mental patterns onto other people who dared to use the books too much, as he had this term in his attempt to Show Dad. He shook his head and looked for a lantern at a reasonable distance, once he could bridge without too much trouble but without looking as though he were deliberately underachieving.

His efforts with his grades had worked, for the most part, but Isaac was still almost surprised by it himself, and doubted that, if his parents had spoken with his teachers, a single one of them would have noted it. He felt like he was invisible, which was not always a bad thing, not at all – the person who wasn’t seen was the person who didn’t have a wand pointed at his head, after all – but…still. Sometimes, he was seized by the temptation to do something outrageous and loud just to see if anyone would notice. It hit as he felt his spell connect with a lantern, tempting him to try to enchant the lantern to do a silly dance as it came down, but he restrained himself, reminding himself that holding the one charm while performing the other would probably just make the lantern fall and hit him in the head.

When he got it down, he burned his finger grabbing it too quickly as the candle turned over inside it, but he got it upright again quickly and extinguished it. Just about then, his neighbor spoke.

He recognized the fellow. Princeton’s…brother, he thought. Though that was a bad way to think of him; if they had shared a surname, Isaac thought he would have hated people who just thought of him as Bauer’s brother far more than he had ever thought about disliking his sister. Princeton the Younger had a name of his own and was no doubt a much more interesting person than his brother, considering that Princeton Senior’s association with Alicia indicated he was very much lacking in both brains and character….

"Well done," Isaac complimented him, then went to to Professor Olivers with his lantern, too, made sure to mention his full name when having it checked off just in case, and went back to his seat to open up his notes, wondering where to start.

On a whim, once he had everything spread out, Isaac dropped a set of notes (neatly, of course, tied together with string; he wasn’t interested enough in testing his visibility and the theory that Princeton the Younger was interesting to gather up papers from all over the floor and then spend time putting them back in order, even if it would be a way to kill some time between now and the end of class, which seemed a long way away when he was faced with the prospect of studying in a room full of chatting, friend-possessing, idiot other people) from the side of his desk which had an arm rest, meaning he had to get out of his chair to get them back from near Princeton's desk. “Sorry,” he said as he straightened back up, then glanced at the other boy's array of notes. “Oh, those are good,” he observed of the sketches, then began his retreat back around toward the open side of his own desk.

16 Isaac Douglas, Crotalus Not much does change around here. 273 Isaac Douglas, Crotalus 0 5

Liliana Bannister

November 22, 2014 9:27 PM

My pleasure. by Liliana Bannister

Brandon shrugged. “Makes sense,” he said. “I’m half-hoping doing something harder will make up for some of my written work. I mean, I get it all, writing about it’s just boring, you know?”

“Yeah, writing essays aren’t exactly the most exciting,” she said. “I like the more hands on activities like we do in Defense. That boggart class last semester? That was awesome!” She raised an eyebrow and grinned. “Nice job,” she added absentmindedly when she looked up from her lantern to see that Brandon had been able to get it down.

“Well, there’s plenty more still up there,” he pointed out as they extinguished their lamps. “And you can light your own in your room any time. “Or ask the elves, if you’re ever up late enough – or early enough – to catch any of them in the common room.”

“Huh,” she said. “But for me a large part of it is that the lanterns are floating. It’s very relaxing and I’m sure I would love to fall asleep looking at them but…” she trailed off, leaving the fire hazard part of it unsaid as she figured that not falling asleep with a lit, floating fire was just plain common sense. “Plus I don’t know any fire containment spells just yet.” Once she knew enough magic to be able to halt the flame and keep it from glowing, diminishing, or spreading where she didn’t want it to go, Liliana full well planned to sleep with floating lanterns in her room. In fact, once she was old enough to live on her own she planned on lighting her whole home with floating lanterns. Perhaps she’d omit the lanterns for a chandelier in the dining room like her grandparents had.

“I know, right?” Liliana asked. “I can’t imagine not having them in our classes next year! I know they’ll still be around and we’ll see them in Cascade Hall and in the common rooms but still…” Liliana pursed her lips and frowned.

Though Liliana knew that the Careys were a prominent American pureblood family—how could she not when about half of Sonora was made up of Careys, she didn’t expect that he knew about her mother’s family because they were English and he was not. In addition, she sported her father’s last name of Bannister, distinguishing her slightly from the family. It was complicated, she had realized, because half of the Rosenthal children were witches who had gone on to marry wizards and have children under their husbands names so it was sometimes difficult to classify them all with just one name like the Careys and the Brockerts seemed to be able to do. As it was, Liliana and her cousins had decided that though they all had different last names they all still had Rosenthal blood and nothing other than that mattered.

“No, I’m an only child,” Liliana said. “On one hand it kind of sucks because at home I’m all by myself but on the other hand I’m glad because it gives me a break and some space from all the cousins.” She laughed. “I have sixteen older cousins. The Rosenthals. All of them are wizards, and they’re all at Hogwarts. When we’re all home together we get into the worst kinds of trouble,” She raised an eyebrow, trying to convey to Brandon the enormity of the impact her family had on her. She was sad that her father’s business move had caused her to attend Sonora instead of Hogwarts, but the good part of that was she had been spared in the midst of the fighting her two best friends from childhood had when they were Sorted into opposing Howarts houses and she had made the Pecari Quidditch team in her first year—something she was sure wouldn’t have happened if she’d been at Hogwarts since the English school seemed to be bigger.

“Just this past winter break, at my Grandmère’s annual winter ball, my cousins and their dates nabbed firewhiskey from my grandfather’s special collection and they and their dates snuck off to have a nefariously good time. Of course, being the youngest, I as not invited to that particular escapade because Merlin knows what Grandmère would have said if we'd been discovered but usually, usually they include me.” Her voice was slightly bitter then, she still hadn't fully forgiven them for leaving her out. “What about you? What do you and your siblings do for fun?”

10 Liliana Bannister My pleasure. 274 Liliana Bannister 0 5

Leo Princeton

November 29, 2014 1:18 PM

Except the staff. by Leo Princeton

Leo was surprised to receive a response to his statement. He hadn’t expected to be complimented by anyone for such a simple task, and the wizard, Isaac Douglas, if he remembered correctly, moved on as if he hadn’t said anything. Was this an attempt to make conversation? Leo wasn’t entirely certain, so he continued with his own business. He highly doubted Douglas meant anything by it and it would be silly to assume he was attempting to be friends.

Once his notes were spread out, Leo doodled and was surprised once again by Douglas dropped his pile of notes conveniently near his desk. Did this lad fancy him or something? If so, Leo’s good looks were attracting the wrong sort for his liking. Leo was slightly confused, and began to try and imagine some ulterior motive for Douglas to show interest in him. Did he have some sort of vendetta against him because of Cepheus? Leo was aware that Isaac was somehow related to Alicia, his brother’s best mate. Or perhaps Douglas wanted to copy off of him, which would be quite odd seeing as Leo usually liked to pretend he was dumber than he actually was. It also wouldn’t help in this case as his notes were in different languages.

Perhaps he’d heard about his interest and extensive knowledge of hexes and jinxes and wanted to learn from him. That, however, was probably unlikely as well since Leo had only hexed two people during his entire career here at Sonora, and both times he had done it in secret. Unless Douglas somehow knew Leo checked out DADA textbooks for upper years and books on curses by chatting up the librarian.

“Do you sketch yourself?” he asked, attempting to stop Douglas before he went any further. Clearly the wizard wanted to say something to him, and Leo thought it best to try and figure out what he wanted before he was hexed behind his back or the like.

40 Leo Princeton Except the staff. 263 Leo Princeton 0 5