You didn't need that book, did you? on Charms

Professor Olivers

June 25, 2015 10:52 PM

Honey, I shrunk the [fill in the blank]! [I & II years] by Professor Olivers

Two weeks had already passed since the start of the term and Florence was having a harder time this year remembering all of the names of her students. That usually meant she called on those whom she did know or had to ask them to state their name before letting them ask their question. Today was a little harder for her than most, and before preparing herself for class she wrote a letter to no one before crumpling it up and throwing it away. It was usually around this time of year when Florence felt that pang of loss most significantly. No matter how many men she fell in love with during the course of her life, none could take Terry’s place. He’d been her first husband; someone she would not easily forget.

During class, however, she put on a brave face and when the beginners came in she knew she could mask her emotions until later tonight when she was alone in her bedroom. Her normally eccentric attire was quite dull and drab today, something only her older students would probably notice. “Good morning everyone,” she said. “I hope you all did your assignment from last week. Turn it into the basket as it comes to you.” With a flick of her wrist, the metal wire-basket floated around to the students’ desks, giving them a few seconds to whip it out of their bags and place it inside.

“While that’s going around, please turn to page 12 of your textbook. Last we practiced the Enlargement Charm. Today we’ll be going over Shrinking Charms. The Enlargement Charm goes hand-in-hand with this one, so I’m sure you’ll all catch onto it fairly quickly. The incantation is Reducio. Let’s say it together once: Reducio. Now together, with the wand movement. Reducio. Very good.

“On your desk is an oversized object that you need to reduce. For first-years, you will be reducing large fruit on this side of the room. For second-years, you need to reduce the moving toys that are scurrying around the opposite side of the room. They are charmed to stay on your side and run away from humans, so you have to be sure of your aim. Remember to use Engorgio if you hit something else as a countercurse. And no purposely shrinking each other.”

Florence plucked the wire basket out of the air as it returned to her and put it down on her desk. “If you need any help for today’s assignment, come ask me. I’ll be here reading your essays and keeping an eye out for all of you. Once you’re finished, come show me your finished product and work quietly on other homework or reading the next chapter.”

OOC: Welcome to Charms! Please write 200 words minimum. Creative, realistic posts are worth more points. Florence will be keeping an eye out for any serious mishaps, and shrinking people would be difficult for first-years (though clothing would be less difficult...). Any questions, tag Professor Olivers on the OOC board or in the tagline. Remember, points are awarded for how well you write, not how well your character does in a lesson.

Subthreads:

Pear by Kira Spaulding, Crotalus with Emilia-Louise Scott, Aladren

You'll never catch me, I'm the gingerbread man! by Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw with Alistair Johnson, Crotalus

Mouse. by Caelia Lucan, Crotalus with Andrew Carey, Teppenpaw

You didn't need that book, did you? by Jax Donovan, Aladren with Laila Kennedy, Crotalus

0 Professor Olivers Honey, I shrunk the [fill in the blank]! [I & II years] 0 Professor Olivers 1 5

Kira Spaulding, Crotalus

July 04, 2015 4:59 PM

Pear by Kira Spaulding, Crotalus

Kira was glad to finally be in classes. All her life, she'd been doing magic accidentally. Of course, most magical children did, but she seemed to be doing it all the time . She'd wake up in the morning with her room in total disarray no matter how clean it been when she'd gone to sleep, especially if she had bad dreams and she'd often break stuff without meaning to or set things on fire. Things would be big and things would be small and things would disappear completely or reappear somewhere else or become something else. For example, her hairbrush would be a wooden spoon when she woke up.

Last summer, her father had finally caught on and caught her off guard completely be telling Kira that she was apparently a very powerful witch and presenting her with an old wand. She didn't know whose wand it had been but Father wanted her to get better control over magi...il she was able to get her own wand and practice legally.

Besides, she'd been eleven already, her birthday was the second day of term, so it wasn't exactly fair that she had to wait the extra year anyway. Though Father said she'd catch up quickly. The best thing about it all had been the extra attention he'd given her. Her parents tended to focus more on her brother as well as Father's work and Mother's social obligations. Alice Spaulding was rather into supporting charities and helping people and being the total antithises of her older sister, Pearl.

Anyway, even though Kira felt so inadequate in so many ways, doing magic well made her feel rather good, though out of habit she still tried not to draw attention to herself. She had wanted such from her parents but at the same time, the Crotalus desperately didn't want to be told what she was doing wrong. But maybe, just maybe, she would finally be better than Kelsey at something . Not to mention be generally less destructive. The first year had never wanted to be, but she just couldn't help it.

Of course, being destructive was just another way she'd screwed up as a proper young lady. Kelsey was never destructive.

She went over and sat at a desk with an oversized pear. Kira hadn't really much problem with the enlarging charm and had mastered it rather quickly. She hoped to have just as much luck with the shrinking charm. The first year had made things bigger or smaller often when she wasn't even trying so maybe now that she was, she'd be even more successful.

Kira practiced the movements and pronounciation, wanting to make sure she had those down. When she thought she was ready, she turned to see a much smaller pear in front of her already. Doll sized, even. But the size for a porcelain doll or rag doll to eat. Kira smiled, now she would try and see if she could make it doll housed size.

But before she had the chance, the person next to her spoke. "Pardon?" The Crotalus asked. "Sorry, I just got kind of into the assignment." She hoped she wasn't making a mistake socially again.

11 Kira Spaulding, Crotalus Pear 320 Kira Spaulding, Crotalus 0 5

Emilia-Louise Scott, Aladren

July 05, 2015 1:39 PM

My apple is dead. by Emilia-Louise Scott, Aladren

Considering that she’d been sorted into the ‘clever house’, Emmy-Lou was a little disappointed by her performance in some of her classes since the start of term. She didn’t feel that she was one of the top students for her year group at all. Charms was one of her least favourite subjects at the moment which annoyed her because she thought it was quite an important one. She considered herself good at remembering the things in textbooks and achieving high marks for her essays but the actual practical aspect of the class did not run quite so smoothly. Last week they had been working on the Enlargement Charm and her results had seemed quite random. She was of the opinion that her wand didn’t like her. It just wasn’t obeying her.

When the basket came around, Emmy-Lou hurriedly put her named essay in. She had found that she enjoyed the Charms homework much more than she did the lessons a lot of the time. The blonde eleven year old opened her book to the correct page as she listened and had to stop herself from groaning out loud. She tried to convince herself that she might actually get on better with the shrinking charm than she had with the enlarging charm but she couldn’t really see how there would be any difference in terms of difficulty.

Emmy-Lou scowled at the apple on her desk.

“Reducio,” she pointed her wand at the fruit. Nothing. “Reducio. Re-duck-she-o.” She didn’t think saying it slowly would help but had no idea what she was doing wrong. Was she putting emphasis in the wrong place? “REductio… reDUCio… reduciO!” She was generally quite an amiable person but found herself getting more and more frustrated each time nothing happened. Emmy-Lou jabbed the apple with her wand a couple of times, repeating the incantation over and over in a rather crazy fashion. She sighed irritably and glanced around the room to see how her classmates were getting on.

The Aladren’s brown eyes widened as she clocked Kira Spaulding sitting near to her, smiling at a tiny little pear. “How?”

“How did you do that so quick?” she expanded when the Crotalus girl missed her one word question. “I mean, just look!” she tapped her apple again a few times just to prove how useless the fruit and her wand were being. “Nothing happens when I do it! Is there some kind of secret?”

8 Emilia-Louise Scott, Aladren My apple is dead. 313 Emilia-Louise Scott, Aladren 0 5

Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw

July 08, 2015 4:12 PM

You'll never catch me, I'm the gingerbread man! by Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw

Ginger was a mixed blood. Her whole family was mixed blood. The California Pierces were so intermixed with magical folk and muggles that when a child was born without magic, it was hard to say whether they were a squib or a muggle. Mostly, the distinction didn't matter anyway, but when they needed one, they generally ignored the legal definition (which didn't take a family like hers into account) and made the call based on whether the person in question could see Regina's ghost. Muggles couldn't. Squibs and those with magic could. It was a pretty simple test and served as an early indicator of who might have magic and who could forget about getting a Sonora letter before anyone's hopes could get very high.

As an infant, Ginger had reportedly found Regina fascinating, so everyone had known before she could even sit up that she had a good chance of being magical. Her mom was magical. Her paternal DNA donor was theoretically muggle (or so Ginger assumed since sperm banks were mostly a muggle thing) so usually - not always, especially when the magic line was prone to squibs, but usually - that meant she'd have been true muggle if she didn't have magic. So she'd been pretty sure Sonora was in her future even before her first bout of accidental magic, and after that it had been pretty much a certainty.

So she'd learned to fly a broom and she'd eagerly watched her magical family members cast spells and brew potions and did all the things she assumed were normal for magical children. But she was still from a mixed family. Her branch had been mixed for as long as it existed. Her family didn't actually know the first thing about how purely magical children, even the ones who weren't society, were raised.

And the toys she saw running around on the second years' side of the Charms classroom were almost entirely foreign.

"It's times like these that I remember the California Pierces will never be a real wizarding family," she remarked out loud to whoever was sitting next to her.

She'd known, of course, that her branch sat on the fringe between the worlds. It was actually a point of pride for them, that they existed on both sides of the magical divide. But, somehow, despite the fact that more than half of her closest cousins (in age, if not heredity) were muggles or squibs, she'd always imagined that their fringe looked as magical as it did muggle.

Now, she wasn't so sure.

She'd grown up on a toy diet of juggling balls, dress-up clothes, wooden swords and shields, and the odd training broom. If her toys ever moved or talked, it was because they had batteries or a muggle toy had been enchanted by one of the older magic users to mimic a toy that had batteries.

Toys actually created in the wizarding world for wizarding children were just too dangerous to keep around where muggles might find them, never mind giving them to toddlers who might carry them out into the middle of a muggle crowd during a busy day at a Rennfaire without understanding that was a serious breach of law.

"So, shrinking spells then," Ginger said, mostly to herself, to refocus on the assignment. She mentally tagged what looked like a gingerbread man running about and pointed her wand at it, moving the end to follow its erratic run between the desks. "Reducio!" she cast, executing the appropriate wand motion, but just as she did so, the gingerbread man put a chair between himself and her wand. The spell caught the chair leg, shrinking the entire piece of furniture out from underneath her neighbor.

Ginger flushed and flinched in embarrassment. "Oops, sorry. The toy moved. I'll fix it," she promised, but waited for them to get out of the way first so she didn't accidentally make things worse than they already were by enlarging her classmate in addition to shrinking the other student's chair.

1 Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw You'll never catch me, I'm the gingerbread man! 302 Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw 0 5

Alistair Johnson, Crotalus

July 10, 2015 4:24 PM

Caught in the crossfire. by Alistair Johnson, Crotalus

Contrary to his own beliefs, Alistair was far better at practical wand work than any other form of learning used in lessons. Whilst he was of the immodest opinion that he was a very good all rounder, the second year Crotalus had always taken himself seriously and liked to think he was a very studious person who read many more books than he actually did. Charms was one of his stronger subjects, particularly because of the large amount of direct wand use in these lessons.

Turning up punctually as always, Alistair took a seat in class and waited for the basket to get around to him. The essay that he handed in had been of decent enough quality but the second year had been quite preoccupied with his Quidditch (Co-)captain duties of late and therefore hadn’t paid too much attention to perfecting it.

Due to being in the older half of the class this term, Alistair was presented with more challenges and whilst harder work wasn’t always appreciated, it was a nice feeling to think that his knowledge and abilities were superior to the majority of his Beginner class peers. He looked at the scurrying toys that he and his yearmates were assigned to shrink for today’s lesson. The Enlargement Charm had been easy and Alistair could remember from previous learning that the Shrinking Charm was no different in terms of difficulty. He thought he was easily capable of today’s “challenge”. The toys reminded him of his childhood a little but playing with such things hadn’t really been actively encouraged in his house and with three much older brothers he’d grown out of them very quickly, not that he had ever really been into them.

When little Ginger Pierce spoke from where she was sat beside him, Ali was almost at a loss for words. At least, he would have been but it wasn’t really his style. He wasn’t sure if she was just thinking aloud or actually talking to him. Either way, he didn’t feel as though it was a very appropriate comment to make. “Quite,” was his monosyllabic reply. He spoke in a rather cold and disapproving tone that he wasn’t used to adopting with the Teppalus Keeper. Having spent the whole time since realizing Ginger was actually a California Pierce and not a New Hampshire Pierce as he had suspected, Alistair had chosen to overlook this fact for reasons he wasn’t quite sure of himself and he now felt as though Ginger was abusing his uncharacteristic generosity by forcing him to acknowledge the facts.

Turning away from the offender, the not-quite-twelve year old pointed his wand at the nearest moving toy and uttered the incantation “reducio”, accompanied by the instructed wand movement. It only took the one attempt to reduce the toy in size as it whizzed around but because it was not still, Alistair had been focussed despite his fair familiarity with the spell he was using. He performed the shrinking charm again on the next toy that came close to him.

Just as Alistair was about to resize a shrunken toy he felt his chair disappearing beneath him. Caught by surprise at the sudden caving of one of his chair legs, the Crotalus found himself falling and grabbed onto his desk to pull him back up just before he hit the floor. “Merlin!” he exclaimed in a highly irritated manner as he stood up and brushed himself off, glancing around at the other students to examine the extent of his humiliation. “What idi-”

He was stopped short however when he realized that Ginger Pierce was talking, apologizing rather. He could not possibly call Ginger an idiot. Even Alistair Johnson wasn’t that cruel. “It’s okay,” he said kindly, still feeling slightly bad that he had been a little short with her only moments before. He stepped aside so that she could fix the chair. Under normal circumstances, he would have quickly performed the enlarging charm himself to prevent further damage or to show off his own abilities but Ginger was a member of his team. As a Captain, Alistair thought it was probably his duty to help his teammates out off the Pitch as well if he was able to do so in any way. “Just concentrate on what you’re doing and make sure you are pointing your wand directly at the correct object,” he advised, not stopping to think he might be being patronizing. He never refrained from being unintentionally patronizing towards Ginger at Quidditch practice and perhaps automatically thought she would be as incapable in everything as she had been at playing Keeper at the very start of last year.

8 Alistair Johnson, Crotalus Caught in the crossfire. 306 Alistair Johnson, Crotalus 0 5

Kira

July 10, 2015 9:27 PM

Poor apple. by Kira

When she realized what her neighbor, Emmy-Lou Scott, had asked her, Kira blushed furiously. Apparently, Emmy-Lou hadn't had any luck with the spell at all and the Crotalus was at a loss for words. She knew that that showed poor social skills and a lady knew how to behave at all times, always knew the right thing to say. She glanced across the room at her cousin, certain that Kelsey would know. Of course, being that Emmy-Lou wasn't a pureblood-Kelsey had oh-so-kindly given Kira the rundown on who was and wasn't appropriate after their first class, as if the first year couldn't reconize pureblood last names on her own-certainly the older Crotalus would probably rather not talk to her. The thing was though, she wouldn't outright say that and handle the situation with grace and tact.

However, that wasn't exactly the issue Kira was having. She didn't really care quite so much beyond that she was a bit paranoid that talking to non-purebloods would make her look inferior to her cousin again and didn't want to marry one. She didn't want to get disowned and throw away everything and everyone she knew. Her issue was that she genuinely had no idea whatsoever how to answer Emmy-Lou's question. Kira didn't know why she was good at magic beyond that some people were just...magically stronger than others.

However, she couldn't say that . It was rude and would probably alienate Emmy-Lou. Technically she wasn't supposed to care about alienating someone who wasn't part of society but Kira did. She didn't want anyone to dislike her at all. Plus, it might hurt Emmy-Lou's feelings and make her feel bad and the Crotalus knew all too well what it was like for someone to be just plain better than her at everything.

Well, almost everything. Kira glanced back at her pear.

Still, feeling inferior was not a nice feeling and to have someone outright say to her they were just better at something would upset her greatly. Not that they did say it. They never had to. Kira knew.

But what could she say? "Um, I-I don't know." She replied, finally, feeling super awkward. It was the truth. How could one say what made someone good at one thing or another? Still Kira felt really stupid both at her lack of social ability and telling an Aladren she didn't know something. She didn't want to give Emmy-Lou reason to find her inferior either.

11 Kira Poor apple. 320 Kira 0 5

Caelia Lucan, Crotalus

July 11, 2015 8:13 PM

Mouse. by Caelia Lucan, Crotalus

Though she knew it was inappropriate for her to like Professor Olivers bright and eccentric clothing, the bold colors were always ones that caught Caelia’s eye. The patterns had always served as a good distraction for Caelia as she generally found it hard to follow along in the group lessons, as though her magical ability was perfectly fine (and her in-class work reflected this), she could never fully grasp the concepts that were being taught mentally (only the extra help Emrys gave her outside of class helped her to keep her essays and homework up to par with her in-class assignments). If asked, she likely wold have vehemently denied thinking the bright pairings were fun. However privately, she always looked forward to seeing what Professor Olivers was going to show up to class in. When she walked into class today though she noticed Professor Olivers had changed her style and Caelia found herself quite disappointed.

As the wire basket moved around the classroom to collect their assignments, Caelia smoothed out hers on her desk in front of her. It had once been a horrible jumble of incorrectly spelled words and grammatically incorrect sentences, inappropriately placed capital letters and missing commas. However, Emrys had spent an hour with her the night before helping her to correct all these errors and then making her rewrite the whole thing on a fresh sheet of parchment. He had also written her up a sheet of paper with a bunch of different grammar rules on it in case he wasn’t around to help out or had a lot of his own work to do. She had thankfully stowed it away in folder in her school bag and asked him to make a copy of it so that she might put one in her desk as well.

The result of the tutoring was a much neater, in-her-best-hand-writing assignment that was far more likely to get a better grade seeing as it was now actually comprehensible. All the ideas were still hers—with a little tweaking from Emrys when she came up with a particularly stupid one, and Caelia honestly didn’t know what she would do without him once he graduated at the end of her third year. Likely die of embarrassment, she thought to herself, her cheeks pink. What would the professors say in the sudden drop in quality? What would her classmates? Would they think she was incapable of doing work herself and would both she and her brother be in trouble for cheating? Emrys always tried to reassure her that what they were doing wasn’t wrong, that all the work was hers and he was just tutoring her, but she still worried.

Caelia sent up a small wish to Merlin for everything to be alright before placing her assignment in the basket and going back to her textbook. She rarely took notes in class, finding that anything she did take was likely to be on the wrong sort of thing and that most of her notes generally ended up being kind of useless. It was for this reason that Care of Magical Creatures was one of her her least favorite classes—having to keep a notebook like that was very difficult for Caelia. Defense Against the Dark Arts also ranked down there on the list of classes Caelia didn’t really like as the whole no homework thing meant that she didn’t have Emrys to help her. Luckily it seemed that Professor Pye didn’t care about spelling that much though he always did give her an amused look each time he handed back her barely-Acceptable level quizes. In all reality, the questions were not difficult ones—all she was expected to do really was write down a few sentences on one of the subjects that had been covered in the previous class. And though the generalities were all there, she always had a hard time remembering the specifics.

Charms, however, was much easier for her to keep on top of. All she really had to remember in order to pass was which spell went with which result, and the pace at which they went at was quite easy for Caelia to properly learn each incantation so she was quite sure that Charms was her best class. Potions was another one that was kind of easy because all she really had to do was follow the instructions. However, she didn’t like the smell of the classroom nor the heat that emanated from the cauldrons as they bubbled away. That only left Transfiguration which was medium-hard for Caelia to do because it meant she had to think about multiple things at once as well as theory and all kinds of other stuff though because she was pretty magically proficient completing the actual in-class work always made her feel better about the other stuff. It was just that the quizes in Defense outweighed getting the spells right and there weren’t really that many spells for her to learn in Care of Magical Creatures.

Today’s lesson was with a spell she was already kind of familiar with—to an extent. Shrinking Charms were things she had seen being used at home rather frequently as the house elf preformed its’ wandless magic. It was a spell that Emrys like to use in order to fit more books under his bed, and one her father had used on cakes when she was younger in order to help her make them doll-sized so that she could play tea party with them. Besides all that, Caelia had found that she never really had trouble actually preforming the spell in class—it was just remembering everything when it came to doing her homework or taking a test that was difficult for her, but Emrys was helping her work towards improving herself.

Caelia set her sights on one of the toys that was running around and carefully aimed her wand. If she had been Emrys she might have observed the toy for awhile to see if it made a pattern and then try to guess where it was running to next, but she wasn’t Emrys and so instead she just planned on attempting to catch the toy in it’s place as it ran. She figured this was a very logical thing to do as the idea of trying to predict the toy’s behavior was one that would never have occurred to her in a million years though if someone suggested it she would likely see the merit in the idea and attempt to do things the Emrys Way. “Reducio,” she said, making sure to enunciate properly. Though her brain could sometimes get muddled, Caelia prided herself on being able to properly pronounce words once she had been told how they sounded.

The spell shot out of the wand, only just missing the little blue and gold mouse who scurried away after she had said the spell. Caelia’s face fell and she sighed, her blonde ringlets bouncing slightly with the movement and she straightened herself out and attempted again. She was going to get the spell sooner rather than later—she had to, Charms was one of the classes in which she didn’t feel like she was falling behind, and she wasn’t going to allow the others to see how incompetent she truly was just yet—that could all wait until after Emrys left. She wanted to bask in the two glorious years she still had of her big brother making sure she didn’t turn in something completely stupid.

“How are you coming along?” she asked her neighbor politely after trying and missing again. “I definitely was about to shrink that mouse there but then it ran away!” She smiled even though she was quite disappointed and turned back to the mouse and saw that it happened have run into a table leg. She aimed her wand and preformed the spell once more. This time it was successful as the mouse had started to run away just as the spell hit it and Caelia turned to her partner very pleased with herself. The mouse wasn’t as small as she had wanted it to be, but it was still progress from the first two times when she had completely missed the target.

10 Caelia Lucan, Crotalus Mouse. 307 Caelia Lucan, Crotalus 0 5

Andrew Carey, Teppenpaw

July 13, 2015 12:25 AM

Eek! by Andrew Carey, Teppenpaw

Professor Olivers was, on the surface, all bubbles and creativity and fun. She wore crazy clothes, was usually the coach for the Quidditch games, and her classes often included toys. Classes often seemed like they should be enormously fun, or at least would erupt into fun and play as soon as they all completed one simple spell.

After a year, though, Andrew knew better. Professor Olivers wasn’t as much fun as she looked and her class was no easier than any other. Andrew even thought some of the others were easier than this one. Transfiguration was harder, and theory lessons in Potions could be challenging, but Defense Against the Dark Arts was usually easier than Charms, at least for him. Professor Pye wasn’t much fun, but the material wasn’t too difficult and sometimes they got to move around, which improved any class a little. One of Andrew’s least favorite things about school was how much time he had to spend sitting still all day, so much that it was sometimes hard not to run in the hallways between classes just to stretch his legs out.

When the basket came around, Andrew dutifully put in his homework, which he expected would be neither among the very best nor the very worst of the submissions. He usually landed in what he imagined was the high end of mediocre, as his scores weren’t perfect but his mother always, so far, seemed happy with the grades he brought home. Once the basket passed him by, he opened his book just as dutifully and looked over the descriptions of the Shrinking Charm as Professor Olivers described it.

He looked up with a little more interest when she gave the second years their assignment. Interest and a little apprehension. Could they really shrink each other? He was used to thinking of Potions as the only class where they were real dangers to each other, since they could make things explode by mistake in there where he’d always thought none of their powers could be developed enough to do anything like shrink people. He made a mental note to watch where other people were standing and to make sure nobody was in his line of sight when he cast his spells at the toys. That was going to be a workout, but at least it would help them all burn off any sugar highs they might have gotten from overindulging in some of the sweeter options at breakfast before they went to Care of Magical Creatures, where too much energy could be a bad thing. Andrew knew it would do him good; at home, breakfast was an all-savory meal and the endless array of sweet cinnamon rolls and French toast and funny-colored cereals with sugar dusted onto them and other things along those lines that Sonora offered along with the foods he was used to seeing on breakfast tables was sometimes just too much to resist.

Biting his lip, he aimed his wand at a doll which was running back and forth and looking a little creepy with its staring doll eyes, but his first attempt at the spell shot past its head, bounced off the wall, and, to his surprise, hit a statue of a hedgehog instead. The wooden figurine began to shrink even as it kept moving, a process he watched until the girl beside him – Miss Lucan from Crotalus – spoke up.

“Good and bad,” he said, then watched as she shrank the mouse. “Oh, good job!” he exclaimed. “I was aiming for the creepy doll, but I hit the hedgehog instead,” he went on, picking back up where he had left off with his progress. “The spell bounced. So my aim’s not that good with moving targets, but the spell works. I should probably work on aim, though, huh?”

0 Andrew Carey, Teppenpaw Eek! 0 Andrew Carey, Teppenpaw 0 5

Caelia

July 15, 2015 10:38 PM

One might think so by Caelia

Mr. Carey from Teppenpaw was one of those students who Caelia had been meant to learn. There were a lot of those peppered throughout the school and though she often had trouble remembering dates or words, names and faces (especially those who she was supposed to know) were not difficult for her. Not easy, but definitely not difficult. It likely had to do with having been surrounded by art growing up, she thought. Her father was huge on nice paintings and had often taken her up on a knee in his study to show her the various artists and paintings lining his walls or to take out a book of art (one of many on his shelves) to disclose information to her even though she was too young to know what he was really saying. Caelia had always valued this time with her father, working her hardest to remember what style of artwork went with which artist, memorizing faces to go with names like she never had before.

Emrys, who was smart but who never had harbored such a feeling for art like she and her father, was always good with faces and names, but for her, simple Caelia to remember one—let alone all—her father’s favorite artists and what they looked like and how they painted was a huge feat and something he was immensely proud of. She had enjoyed the feeling so much she had transferred it over to learning people in society. This earned a lot of praise from her grandparents and even from Emrys who was always proud when she was able to make her brain work like that. But she hadn’t been able to use that power with anything else and she had remained rather useless—until she came to Sonora and found that though she didn’t have the smarts to be good at school, she did have the magical aptitude.

So, when Mr. Carey praised her ability to shrink the toy mouse, Caelia smiled pleasantly, her pale cheeks coloring just slightly and she looked down at her wand demurely. “Oh,” she said, suddenly feeling very shy. “Thank you. I-uh-er-that is to say, I don’t think I would have been able to do it though, had it not run into the table leg.” Credit where credit was due—or at least, that’s what she would have thought had she known that phrase. “But your shrinking hedgehog was quite nice even if you did mean for the doll.”

She looked out at the toys again, trying to decide which one she wanted to shrink next before settling on a bizarre looking monkey clanging symbols together as it loped around the floor. “I think I’ll try that one next,” she said, pointing to the red and brown toy, and aiming her wand. “Reducio.” The spell missed and hit a book instead and Caelia’s blush returned. “Oops,” she said, wanting to turn away and pretend as though that had never happened. However, she couldn’t remember the counter-spell which meant she would have to ask Mr. Carey. “What, um, what’s the spell to reverse that again?” She asked, feeling very awkward indeed.

10 Caelia One might think so 307 Caelia 0 5

Jax Donovan, Aladren

July 16, 2015 7:15 PM

You didn't need that book, did you? by Jax Donovan, Aladren

Jax always completed his homework the same day it was assigned unless it was a complicated project that he needed time to review and research. However, he didn’t have to worry about that for the moment. Their homework in charms had been a rather simple essay and Jax had managed to complete the work in about a half hour. Gia had been doing her homework alongside him, which was normal, and she had ended up completing hers not long after he had. Working on homework with someone made it so much easier than when he did it alone. He wasn’t really sure why that was and he didn’t know if it was just with Gia or with someone else, but he didn’t really care to know.

Well, that was only partly true. Jax didn’t necessarily enjoy being alone it was just something he felt was necessary in order to keep his family safe and his secret secured. There were times when Jax saw other people in his house having a good time together or even his sister with her friends enjoying a meal together while he awkwardly sat next to her. He wanted to join in. He wanted to have fun with his roommates (okay, maybe not so much with Barnaby as Jax was certain that guy did not know what a laugh was), but he did wish that he was included in things. It was a desire he’d had even as a kid, after everything had happened. But every time he had gotten involved with others, his secret came out and everyone became his enemy. Whatever relationships they had shared were meaningless. Jax really wasn’t sure if he could handle that happening again while at Sonora or risk his sister losing all of her friends because of him.

Once he had deposited his homework into the floating bin, Jax took the moment to open his book and flip to the page that the Professor had indicated. The most difficult part of this lesson would be the fact that the object was moving. Enlarging or shrinking spells really weren’t difficult and Jax could easily do them on inanimate objects, but the idea of accidentally hitting something instead of his object because it was moving was a bit unnerving.

Jax looked at his train as it rolled around his area, keeping its distance from him. He would have enjoyed this toy when he was a kid. He felt like if his father had lived, this was something he would have given him as a present. Just thinking about his father always made him feel a little sick to his stomach. Jax tried not to think about the whole incident that had led to his father’s death. He remembered some of it. Usually it came to him when he least expected it. It was remembering the screaming that made it so terrifying.

He took aim at the train and tried to pin point a spot just before it to shoot for, “Reducio”, Jax stated, only to watch the train turn on him and the spell hit the textbook of the person sitting next to him. “Oh, I’m so sorry.” Jax exclaimed, feeling embarrassed by the miss. “Engorgio” Jax said hurriedly to correct his mistake.

6 Jax Donovan, Aladren You didn't need that book, did you? 296 Jax Donovan, Aladren 0 5

Andrew

July 16, 2015 9:35 PM

I think we're safe for now by Andrew

Andrew shrugged when Caelia admitted she, too, hadn’t gotten the execution down perfectly. “As long as we get something, right?” he said, then lowered his voice a little as he added, “Professor Olivers probably won’t know the difference, and I’m not going to go around casting this on too many moving things outside here, are you?”

If Professor Olivers had been looking right at them, she might have noticed that his spell had bounced and that hers had been aimed at something which had recently hit a table, but with a room full of other people to keep track of at the same time, Andrew thought the chances of that were very small. At home, his tutors had worked with him one-on-one and he hadn’t been able to get away with anything, but at school, there was just too much going on in the room for one person to keep track of it all even when spells weren’t flying around everywhere. When they were, he felt perfectly comfortable with obeying either the spirit or the letter of the law more closely than he did the other, as appropriate to the situation, because he really didn’t think that anything short of outright defiance or attempts to hurt another student or cheat on an exam was going to be noticed, or at least called out.

Her next attempt hit a book instead of the weird monkey-thing, which was for some reason banging a pair of metal plates together. “I guess engorgio,” Andrew said when she asked how to reverse the spell and restore the book to its proper size. “I think I saw in the book that they’re each other’s counterspells.” He bit his lower lip as he thought about something he hadn’t considered before. “Which I guess is why it might be good to be able to hit a moving object with them,” he acknowledged. “Like, if someone was really powerful and blew someone else up to giant size and they were stomping around and about to trample on everyone….”

That was the kind of thought that he knew Mal would make fun of him for, though, and he knew he started flushing as he trailed off. “Though we probably don’t have to worry about that,” he finished, looking back toward the objects still running around and picking out another one to try to hit. “It’s not even the worst-case scenario, since something that big would be easier to hit.”

0 Andrew I think we're safe for now 0 Andrew 0 5

Laila Kennedy, Crotalus

July 17, 2015 1:40 AM

No, I didn't, thanks for asking though. by Laila Kennedy, Crotalus

Ever since Laila’s discovering that she was a wizard not a witch she had been feeling better about her newly classified powers. There was no devil worshiping going on at Sonora and the school had even been nice enough to permit Professor Tallec to take her to church when he was able and Sundays where that didn’t work she simply took herself to the MARS room where she had discovered portraits could talk and conversed with a portrait of St. Paschal Baylon, who though he sometimes berated her for skipping out on the Eucharist really turned out to be an excellent conversation partner as he provided an interesting outlook on life. In the back of her mind Laila wondered what a portrait of a Catholic saint was doing on the wall of a wizarding school, however she had vaguely cottoned on that the MARS room provided students with whatever it was that they needed at the moment and didn’t ask any questions short of assuming it was likely a miracle that made all of that possible.

However, sometimes, when she was sitting in a class like Charms in which they were learning how to change the size of objects or multiply them, or even worse in classes like Transfiguration in which they had to turn water into rum at one point (half of the spells she was worried about were rumors or things she had seen older students practicing) she found it had to believe that just anyone could do this. Weren’t those things that God alone was allowed to do? The whole concept was very troubling to Laila who though she knew rum and wine to be two different substances figured they were close enough to count as the miracle of the Wedding at Cana. Today, though, she didn’t have much time to think about her moral dilemma of the spell they were learning as the boy sitting next to her—someone in the older level, she believed, still not totally able to come to terms with having classes with students older than herself as even though Turner’s Point was a small town everyone had still been broken up into year groups, shrunk her textbook.

“Oh,” she said as he apologized and grew it back to it’s proper size like it was nothing. She blinked. He hadn’t even hesitated in his spellwork like she might have done. Though Laila had not been shy when she knew how to do something back in what the wizards called Muggle school, here she felt as though one wrong spell could send her home where her mother would ask her endless questions about Sonora and the witches. “That’s quite alright, thank you.” She stared at his wand a moment longer before realizing that staring at someone’s wand was likely just as rude as staring at someone. She looked away quickly, shifting her gaze to the large peach sitting in front of her. She hadn’t even begun to try and shrink it. Although she was clear now that she was not, in fact, a hated witch but rather a wizard (which really was a much more glamorous picture after all) she was still sometimes hesitant when it came to actually altering the natural state of something.

“So, um, you’re no stranger to this wizarding stuff, are you?” she asked, certain her cheeks were bright red. Sonora was doing something to her, she realized. Where she had once been an overly confident, bubbly young girl who liked to make new friends and chatter endlessly about nonsensical things and run about, she was now a bundle of nerves, excited and worried and confused all at the same time, too afraid of making a wrong move to make any move at all and it frustrated her. She didn’t understand why she wasn’t working properly—it just didn’t make sense. She wasn’t used to having to be the one behind in lessons, the one who needed to ask help from Arne Reinhardt who, back in Turner’s Point, had been just about the last person anyone wanted to ask help from.

“Does it—does it get easier as it goes on?” Her forehead wrinkled together as she imagined seven long years of jumping at things that went bump in the night, cringing every time she was asked to do something that in her faith she didn’t think she really was allowed to do. “You um, you wouldn’t happen to have any tips, would you?”

OOC: Mention of Professor Tallec approved by author at an earlier time.

10 Laila Kennedy, Crotalus No, I didn't, thanks for asking though. 318 Laila Kennedy, Crotalus 0 5

Caelia

July 18, 2015 12:09 AM

Safety first! by Caelia

Caelia nodded slowly. What Andrew said made sense, but wasn’t that sort of cheating? Caelia wasn’t certain though if Andrew said it was okay then it likely was. Right? She didn’t really want to bother with too much thinking then and just did what she normally did, smiled and nodded and felt like a complete idiot. At least it was only a vague comment and not something she was supposed to reply to with an incredibly insightful comment, so that was good and Caelia dusted some imaginary dirt off her skirt before going back to work.

“Thank you,” she said and cast engorgio on the textbook. After casting it two or three times she was able to get it back to it’s regular size and she scribbled the name of the spell down in her notes, not paying attention to the spelling as she knew that later on Emrys would help her if it was spelled too incredibly wrong. After that, she turned in her chair so that she could better face Andrew, keeping her wand in her hand to play with while they talked. She had preformed reducio twice now and engorgio once so that was proof enough that she knew the spells, she figured, and she could always try again in a little bit but for now she really needed a break.

She didn’t know how much she agreed with Andrew’s idea that a large stomping thing would be less worse than a small stomping thing on the grounds of something large was easier to target because she figured something large would do more damage than something small. Certainly when she got mad and stomped off nothing really happened. If a giant bear were to get mad and stomp off, on the other hand, whole area could be destroyed. Her forehead puckered a little as she tried to keep up with her train of thought before just letting it all go and nodding along with Andrew like she had earlier with the bit about bending the rules.

“I suppose so,” she said simply. However, she wanted to continue the conversation and so elaborated her response, deciding that Andrew really couldn’t fault her imagination as stupid considering he’d just shared some of his own imaginings. “The only thing worse than an engorged stomping witch or wizard would be an engorged stomping bear or wolf. I’d much rather have a quick and painless death from the Killing Curse than be torn to shreds by the teeth of something like a bear!” She tilted her head, her blonde curls shifting slightly as she did so. “Though, I don’t think I’d like to have much of any sort of death really, seeing as I’m only twelve.”

10 Caelia Safety first! 307 Caelia 0 5

Andrew

July 18, 2015 6:16 PM

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure by Andrew

Andrew nodded when Caelia said the Killing Curse sounded like a better way to go than being ripped to shreds by a wolf or bear. “Yeah,” he said fervently. “I mean, I guess a big enough bear or wolf could just get you – or me, or whoever – “ he added quickly, not wanting Caelia to think he was thinking about her specifically – “in one bite, but I wouldn’t really want to go that way even then,” he said. If something ate him, then they wouldn’t be able to bury him properly, and that would be bad. He and Mother visited Father’s grave sometimes, took him flowers on holidays and his birthday and things like that, and he thought it would make it worse for Mother if she couldn’t do that for Andrew, too, if he was also dead. Not that he thought there was a way to make it not bad for Mother – she was still sad about Father being dead even though he’d died before Andrew was born – but that would probably make it worse. Mother said it was important to respect the dead.

He was distracted from those thoughts, which he didn’t much enjoy, by Caelia pointing out something else, something even more obvious, and smiled at her for distracting him. “That’s a good point,” he said. “I hope I live as long as Anthony the Fourth – he’s a really, really, old man in my family,” he added to explain. He wished he could be more specific than ‘really really old,’ but he didn’t know exactly how old Anthony was, just that he was really, really old and that they always ate caramel cake, which was supposed to be the old man’s favorite, on Anthony the Fourth’s birthday even though Anthony wasn’t even from North Carolina. South Carolina was practically another family, but Anthony the Fourth was more or less the head of heads, half a step or so above the heads of all the other parts of the Carey family. Plus, his great-something grandkids were friends with Andrew’s sister Lucille and who really needed that much of an excuse to eat caramel cake?

He cast another spell and this time hit the thing he wanted to hit. “This is more fun than I thought it was going to be,” he said. “And we’re not getting stomped on, which always helps. Do you try to think of stuff do to with spells a lot?” he asked. He liked trying to come up with improbable uses for some of their classwork sometimes, but didn’t know if other people did so or not.

0 Andrew An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure 0 Andrew 0 5

Jax

July 19, 2015 9:39 PM

I'm glad it didn't bother you any. by Jax

The girl was not upset with him for having accidentally shrunken her test book, that was definitely a good thing. Jax really didn’t want to have to deal with a girl who would get angry over a small mishap and then be demanding of some sort of collateral for the accident.
Jax hated girls who thought they were on pedestals. The sort who thought every male should bow to them because they were growing up like pretty princesses where things were handed down to them instead of like human beings like the rest of them.

Jax had to be better about pre-judging people. He knew it wasn’t fair, but life wasn’t fair and Jax felt like his first instincts on people were usually always the correct one. So far, Sonora seemed to be full of people (not necessarily girls) who fit the described description. He was only observing of course and didn’t really know these people at all, but sometimes a person could learn enough just by general observation.

This girl was not familiar, which made her a first year. Jax hadn’t really given much through to the first years accept for the ones in his own house only because they shared space. He would eventually figure out all of the new students once he’s had time to evaluate them, but it just hasn’t happened yet. Today though, today Jax was getting the chance to interact with one of the new girls. He didn’t immediately place her into a house, but he knew she wasn’t in his.

She thanked him and Jax gave a nod to politely acknowledge the exchange before returning to his work. Or he tried to at least. He felt someone staring and when he looked up, he found the girl looking in his direction. He thought maybe she wasn’t happy with what had happened and was going to tell him off for it, but she wasn’t saying anything and Jax wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say.

“So, um, you’re no stranger to this wizarding stuff, are you?”

Jax had not been expecting that to come out of her mouth. Did that mean she was a Muggleborn? Jax had been around Muggles as much as he was around Magical folk, so talking to her didn’t make him nervous as it might someone else, plus Jax had been eating meals with Gia and her rowdy bunch and he knew that Sammy was a Muggleborn too. “Both of my parents are Magical, if that’s what you are asking.” Jax answered her, his usual cool personality making its rounds.

“I think so, as long as you put in the work for it.” Jax advised. “We can’t do magic before we begin school, although I think some Magical families break the law with this and allow them to.” Jax shrugged. When a family had the money to pay off the authorities, they could do whatever they wanted. It wasn’t very fair for the rest of them, but very little was done to change that. “Some get tutored in the general knowledge of Magic before they start school as well. But we all should be starting out at the same level of actually casting spells when we start as first years.” He wasn’t really sure why he was explaining all of this to her, but he felt that Gia had been asked a bunch of questions from Sammy, so there was a chance that this girl needed someone to ask things too as well and Jax didn’t see the harm in answering them.

He thought about what she had just asked him. Any tips… He wasn’t sure if anything he said would really be all that helpful for someone who has never been around magic before. “It’s about confidence. You have to believe that you can do it in order to do it.” Jax stated. “Mistakes are okay, but you can’t get frustrated by it because that’ll only make it worse.” He advised. “Your accuracy will get better with practice.”

6 Jax I'm glad it didn't bother you any. 296 Jax 0 5

Ginger

July 19, 2015 10:12 PM

I really am sorry by Ginger

Ginger shot Alistair a mildly irritated frown when he remarked on her family’s mixed status, but she’d been the one to bring it up, and she probably shouldn’t have expected anything else from him, and then she promptly forgot the whole exchange as she set to the task at hand.

Or she would have if she hadn’t then subsequently shrunk his chair out from under him - entirely by accident, she swore! Fortunately, he didn’t seem to think it was in retaliation for his earlier curtness and accepted her apology quicker than she thought he might. She was really glad he hadn’t fallen all the way to floor. Teammates or not, she wasn’t sure he would have been so forgiving if he’d sprawled all the way down instead of catching himself on the desk.

He moved out the way so she could fix his chair, and she tried not to bristle as he offered advice she really did not need. She was a second year and knew perfectly well how to cast an enlargement charm by now. Still, she had just nearly dumped him on the floor by accident, so she kind of figured she was due some poor manners for that and consequently didn’t snip at him that she already knew how to do this, and it was the stupid gingerman’s fault for running away that she’d hit the wrong target the last time.

Casting the charm to resize the chair back to its normal state, she pushed it back into place and said, still a bit flushed and embarrassed about the whole thing, “All better. Sorry again.” It really was bad form to attempt to dump one’s Quidditch captain on the floor, after all.

1 Ginger I really am sorry 302 Ginger 0 5

Laila

July 20, 2015 11:47 PM

It takes a lot to get on my nerves. by Laila

It appeared, Laila thought as her neighbor nodded back to her, that she had chosen a rather quiet person to sit next to. Which, while normally would have caused her to pester the person into opening up and talking with her, this time around had allowed her to breath a sigh of relief that this meant she didn’t have to do more than minimal interactions. It was weird and off-putting moving from a place where she was well-known and well-liked to somewhere that she was a relative nobody, but putting up a fuss really wouldn’t do much for anybody and so she was determined to try and get over the shyness she was feeling and put herself out there again.

So, when the older boy began to respond to her questions and, what’s more, embellish on his answers, she was pleasantly surprised and she felt a little more of her old-self returning to her, the old-self that made friends easily. Perhaps, she thought to herself now, this would be a new opportunity, one of those doors or windows her father was always talking about. A door to a friend other than Arne which would be a welcome change. It drove her nuts how her housemate thought it was perfectly alright to just take food off her plate during dinner and interrupt her studying. Sure, at first, his first response about both his parents being magical was off-putting as his tone had been a bit chilly, but the rest of his responses were encouraging to her and so Laila just smiled in response and shrugged off any perceived coolness she had received.

“Both, one, doesn’t matter really,” she responded in a cheery manner choosing not to take offense. “You grew up around magic. Is it weird having to mesh? Or did you grow up around…Muggles?” She had to search for the correct term, slightly hesitant in saying it as though it was a term she had heard a lot and sometimes thought, it wasn’t one she had ever really said out loud being unfamiliar with it. However, it was one that was necessary for her to say because she was curious what the varying backgrounds of her classmates were—all the Reinhardts had grown up understanding Muggle things, for instance, what with Arne and Tobi living in Turner’s Point and Liac being halfblood, but she wasn’t sure about everyone else. The discovery of a wizarding world had really turned everything on it’s head for Laila.

“Either way I plan on working hard,” she didn’t know if the boy was the kind of person who had no time for lazy people or not, but Laila certainly didn’t want to give the wrong impression if this was, indeed, one of those doors or windows. And besides that, it wasn’t the working hard part that would end up troubling Laila, it would be the believing in herself because she was still finding magic a hard concept to believe in. She saw it at work right in front of her eyes, but part of it felt so surreal. She had grown up being reassured that the sort of person who could turn you into a toad was make believe, that the only magic there was, was Santa Claus and the tooth fairy. At least she hadn’t come from an evangelical background like Nora from up the way. If Nora’d had problems dealing with the Riley boys’…different uncle then Laila really didn’t know how her friend would have been able to come to terms with finding out she was a wizard.

“So where do you get your confidence from?” Laila asked, genuinely curious. Her desk partner had so easily performed both the reducio and the engorgio spells that she figured he had to be one of the most confident people she had ever met before. If she was stalling, she didn’t notice that she was now because she was now completely engrossed in the conversation. She put an elbow on the desk next to the giant peach and leaned into her hand, her ponytail swinging gently into the gap between her forearm and her upper arm, the dark hair tickling her skin. Laila’s nose wrinkled in response and using her other hand she moved her hair behind her back so it didn’t bother her anymore.

10 Laila It takes a lot to get on my nerves. 318 Laila 0 5

Jax

July 24, 2015 11:50 PM

It takes very little to get on my nerves. by Jax

Jax thought about her question carefully. He had lived around many people; they never really gave it much thought. To his family, as long as they found a safe place to stay for a little while, that was all that mattered. Being Pureblood, he understood the necessity to only be around those of a currently stature, but due to his predicament, his family sacrificed quite a bit of their traditions and values. However, it was also his predicament that kept them from merging too far into the Muggle world. Jax couldn’t go through the change while anywhere near those who were incapable of protecting themselves or understanding what it was exactly that they were encountering.

“I’ve mostly been around Magical people.” Jax explained, “But Muggles are not foreign to me.” He added. “I know some people may have a harder time acquainting themselves with those of different blood status than themselves, but I would think that was more out of misunderstanding than anything else.” Jax said for conversational purposes. There were always going to be people who were prejudice against Muggles or Muggleborns and Halfbloods. Jax felt no need to say any of this to her though. There were prejudices in the Muggle world too.

Jax nodded as the girl declared that she planned on working hard for her studies. He could respect someone who put in the effort for their work. Jax found just a low tolerance for those who just glided through life with the expectation that things were done for them by others or that just because of their name that they wouldn’t have to do any work. He knew those types of people existed, even if he hadn’t yet come across any himself. At least not at Sonora. He had met plenty of them during his years as a Nomad. People who put down his mother for being a single mother of two children who had little to support them with. People who put Jax down for being what he was. People who talked poorly of his father, a man whom they had never met.

They were despicable.

“I read.” Jax answered her as plainly as though she had asked him what color his eyes were. Reading the chapters, studying the content, Jax had a sense of understanding of the spells he was going to cast. He knew what to do, how to wave his wand, what to say, and what the end result would be. Having that knowledge gave him the confidence that he needed. Whether or not they actually worked correctly was another matter. “Also, we learned these spells last year, so I already know how to do them. The only difference this year is that we have to do them on moving objects, which is what makes them challenging.” Jax explained, indicating her once shrunken textbook. “It took some practice to get it perfected last year.” He didn’t want her to think that just knowing what a spell was would be enough to have perfect spell casting.

“You’d be a Magical Prodigy if you could get every spell you cast to perform perfectly. When I mess up, I just review the steps again and start over.” Jax advised. “Every failed attempted just brings me one step closer to success.”

6 Jax It takes very little to get on my nerves. 296 Jax 0 5

Caelia

July 25, 2015 7:18 PM

/me doesn’t know any clever sayings like that by Caelia

Andrew was kind of creative, Caelia thought, as her classmate described the different ways to go. But she was glad that he didn’t speak in large words like her family sometimes did. She wasn’t sure if it was because he knew or if perhaps he just wasn’t the sort of person who liked to express himself in that way, but either way she was still grateful that instead of extremely (a new word she had learned yesterday from Emrys) he had said really, really because it had been easier for her to follow along rather than try and go back into her memory and recall a word that she may or may not have heard Emrys use and then explain especially because more often than not she couldn’t fully remember the definitions and also sometimes got words mixed up so she thought one thing when really her conversation partner had meant another.

She simply nodded, however, as she didn’t really know anyone who was very, very old. Most of her grandparents friends were just the typical age for a wizard or witch, and her grandfather had died rather young for a wizard due to an illness he had caught so she really had no frame of reference for how old older people could really get. However, she did agree with Andrew’s statement that casting the spell was fun and she smiled in response. “Yes,” she said, nodding and taking aim for the next toy she planned on attempting to shrink. Luckily second year was much easier for her as it meant she had already learned the spell the previous year and so she didn’t fumble over remembering incantations nearly as much anymore.

As for coming up with different things for spells, she wasn’t quite sure how to answer that question. She often tried to remember things by associating them with other things. Her brother had told her that was a good way to try and expand her brain, but Caelia usually gave up after a couple tries if she couldn’t get it because not being as smart as her brother really frustrated her sometimes. However, she didn’t think that was what Andrew was talking about and so she shrugged. “Kind of,” she replied. “A lot of times my brother tells me what he thinks spells could be used for but I don’t think I’m creative enough in that way.”

Caelia didn’t really know if she could be considered creative at all, really. Sure, she enjoyed art and dancing and being silly sometimes, but most of her wardrobe was considered to be rather conservative as it mainly consisted of pastel colored dresses and floral prints, and any art that she did do was similarly in the still life creativity vein. Dancing alone in her room and sometimes with Emrys was really sometimes the only time she felt like herself. No Grandmother Viviane watching over her to see if she was behaving properly or not, no words or concepts that she couldn’t understand, just her alone, twirling with scarfs listening to the jazzy music that Grandmother so unexpectedly enjoyed.

10 Caelia /me doesn’t know any clever sayings like that 307 Caelia 0 5

Laila

July 27, 2015 12:29 AM

I'm sorry, I just find it exhausting to be annoyed. by Laila

All of the information her classmate was giving her was useful and Laila found herself nodding along as he talked. Most of what he said regarding schoolwork echoed sentiments her father had given her when she’d been frustrated over an assignment in elementary school. This boy was easier to talk to than Arne as she didn’t feel like she was going to be made fun of at any given moment. He was also easier to access than Tobi since they were in the same class and, additionally, he wasn’t Tobi so there was no way Arne could scowl about her talking to him. Laila really didn’t know what was up with the Reinhardt brothers, only that something had happened over the past year that had separated the two who had once been so close.

“You sound like my dad,” she said to him once he was done talking. “He’s a very wise man, I think. He tells me the same sorts of things, and tries to reassure me that when I mess up to always try again because I won’t get anywhere if I just give up.” Laila looked away, suddenly feeling an onslaught of homesickness. Coming to Sonora had been a little bit of an ordeal not only for her family but also for the town. Almost no one except the strange Reinhardts ever really left Turner’s Point and if they did leave it was generally just to go on vacation and then they’d come right back home again.

The no one that left town most definitely included the Kennedy family. Laila’s father had been a basketball start back in his day, her whole family on her dad’s side was deeply rooted in the community and as such the idea that she would be sent to the same boarding school that the Reinhardt boys attended was practically blaspheme. It had been expected that she would either attend Turner High School like her father or Our Lady of the Lake which was the near by Catholic school. Now all those plans were in the trash and she was sure her poor mother was wringing her hands trying to come up with a way to save face.

Loretta Kennedy was an immigrant to Turner’s Point, a small town girl from Italy who had gotten stranded in Turner’s Point one winter while on her way from Seattle, Washington to Fremont, California. Laila’s father had been on break from college, working on cars for fun in the garage when Laila’s mother had walked in desperate for any help she could get and it had pretty much been love at first sight and long story short she never left. It was a cute story in Laila’s opinion, but being an outsider also meant that her mom had to work extra hard to earn and retain the respect of the town’s people.

It was then that Laila realized she didn’t even know the name of the boy she was talking to and since names were a crucial step to moving from stranger to acquaintance, she offered him a small smile that was still slightly tinged with the bout of homesickness and told him that she was Laila by the way and what was his name? She didn’t bother with her last name because she honestly hadn’t even thought to share it.

"So do you know any magical prodigies?" she asked after the second year replied. The way he had brought up that subject kind of made it sound like he knew one or had at least heard of one and she was interested to know about that. She already spent a great deal of time trying to play catch up and inform herself and the sorts of things her classmates who would have grown up with magic around likely already knew, but she hadn't realized that different wizards had different levels of magic in them. That wasn't really something that had been covered in the books she had read so far—unless Arne knew and was purposely withholding the information from her to make her look stupid. It was the sort of thing that she wouldn't have put past Turner's Point Arne as he had done something similar to George Tailer in Mrs. Kunes' class.

10 Laila I'm sorry, I just find it exhausting to be annoyed. 318 Laila 0 5

Jax

July 30, 2015 7:52 PM

To each their own by Jax

Jax wasn’t sure if her comment should be taken as an insult or not. He sounded like her father? Was her father an intelligent man? Was he mean or cold? Did she hate him? But she continued on with the thought and Jax took it to be more of a positive than a negative. What he felt he said, he figured most people would consider to be common sense when attempting to learn something new. But, there were quite a few people who expected things to work out the first time and gave up in frustration if they didn’t. Plus, if she were a Muggleborn, this was all probably confusing in general and hard to understand where to begin.

His vibrant blue eyes that were a lovely contrast to his coloring and dark hair, returned to the moving object in front of him while he tried to concentrate at the task once more. He had to work on his aim. The spell was fine, it was his predictions to where the toy would go that was the problem. Jax needed to work out the pattern that the toy was moving in in order to be able to predict the exact location to send his spell to without missing the toy this time.

What little concentration he had didn’t last long as the girl introduced herself to him. “Jax.” He replied back. In this world, if someone didn’t reply with their full name, they were likely to be Muggleborns. But since she hadn’t provided him with hers, Jax found no reason to give her his own surname. It wouldn’t mean much to her anyway. Donovan was a name that had meaning in Ireland but not much anywhere else. His mother was Greek. Her name had status in Greece but not anywhere else. Here, in America, they had anonymity and that was what they were hoping for.

“Not personally.” Jax replied. “I’ve read about them in books though. “ He explained. “They have this to hone their magic and just by watching someone else do it, they can cast a spell perfectly the first time and remember it from then on. But I wouldn’t bet on ever meeting one. There aren’t many.” Jax was envious of those sorts of people, but they were extremely rare. Some believed that it was all about the genetics. His mother was a great Witch and Jax would fight anyone who said differently, but she was not a prodigy. His father, a man whose face Jax was starting to forget, probably wasn’t one either. It was really quite a shame. Jax wouldn’t even need school if that were the case. He could just read a book with demonstrations in it and be all set.

Returning to his work, Jax watched the toy again. Feeling like he had an idea of what the pattern was, Jax shot the spell once again towards the toy, but ended up hitting his quill instead. He was barely a miss, but he hadn’t been quick enough with casting the spell to hit the toy. Jax sighed, his timing was still off. He returned his quill to its original size and made a note. He would have to work out the steps to the time so that he would have time to cast the spell.

Looking over to the girl, Jax checked on her progress. “Did you manage to cast it yet?” He asked her.

6 Jax To each their own 296 Jax 0 5