Well, it was nice for a minute. on Charms

Professor Wright

July 18, 2019 4:42 PM

Look at all the pretty colors, Intermediates (III-V Years). by Professor Wright

During the summer, Professor Wright had sometimes thought that it would be pleasant to get back to the school. He had thought that he had grown so accustomed to spending long periods of time around lots of people that he had not been entirely sure what to do with so much peace and quiet.

After a few days back at the daily grind, he wondered if he had somehow eaten of the insane root that time he had thought he was eating a dish with previously-unencountered but tasty and non-insanity-inducing root vegetables. And so all was back to normal.

"Hello everyone," he said to his Intermediate class. "Hope everyone's ready to learn more about Charms, because that's the vast majority of what we do here." He could not say that was all that happened here, as he had had debates about academic integrity and talks about his former life in this same room, and had also developed a habit of occasionally scribbling lines of his novel last year, though at the moment all the mismatched odds and ends of paper he had scrawled it on were stacked as neatly together as they would go inside an envelope, which was locked inside his writing desk. He had finished the first draft, or felt he had, two weeks before the beginning of term, and was still a bit baffled by this. He had never written a novel before. It was very different from completing an audio script, at least to his mind.

However, at the moment, he had other concerns, and did not foresee much happening today besides talking about Charms. So he started talking about that subject.

"Today, we're going to talk about color changing charms," he announced. "This is one of those charms which is largely exactly what it sounds like. It changes the colors of things. There's times when this is practical, and times when this is just a way to amuse yourself, and places between. They're related to some stronger charms - illusions - which can conceal people and objects, and fifth years, you'll do some research into that. If it helps, I think this topic is sort of fun to delve into."

He somehow doubted this actually cheered up anyone who didn't want to do research, but he'd tried.

"The spell is colovaria, and you point your wand at what you want to enchant," he told them. "Third years, today, you will take these blue marbles and turn them whatever color you like, so long as it's not a shade of blue. Fourth years, you get to work with earthworms and turn them orange - a temporary effect which will not harm them in any way," he added. "Fifth years, you also pose no real danger to the beetles you will turn coral pink," he informed them. "Fourth years, you may choose what shades of orange you aim for, but it must be very clearly distinct from red. Fifth years, aim as closely as you can at this color." He pointed his wand at the blackboard and turned a square of it coral pink.

There was reasoning behind the fourth and fifth years being assigned colors to turn their more complex items. Primary colors were easier to work than shades like coral and any shade of orange, and the more specific the direction, the more difficult the students were likely to find it. He had decided not to go into any detail with that for now, however, so he could see what the students produced without the pressure of knowing he was evaluating their skills on that basis. There would be some false positives and negatives, of course, due to laziness or bad days, but he was still curious to see what data could be gleaned from the experiment and how that would inform his next lesson, where he would explain more of this information to them.

"That's all for now. Raise your hands if you have any questions, and I'll be around. Try not to explode anything, and don't let the beetles escape their containers, please," he concluded, and stepped back so the children could come to the supply table to pick up the box containing the target for their grade level.

OOC: Welcome back to Charms! As always, points are gained by creativity, realism, relevance, and length. If you have any questions, you can tag me IC here or OOC in Chatzy (generally as Tatiana Vorontsova) or on the OOC board. Have fun!

Subthreads:

I'm confused about where the furniture came from. by Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw with Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren

Well, it was nice for a minute. by Evelyn Stones, Pecari with Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

Ooo.. Research opportunity by Gary Harper, Aladren with Ness McLeod

Where? by Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw

16 Professor Wright Look at all the pretty colors, Intermediates (III-V Years). 113 Professor Wright 1 5

Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw

July 19, 2019 2:41 PM

I'm confused about where the furniture came from. by Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw

Intermediate classes had gone on for several days without incident, but Katya was still not prepared to lower her guard too far. At any point, she was sure, they were going to try to turn on her, and she did not intend to allow them to do that.

She was not, however, being helped by her hair. Her mother had decided she should wear a fringe this year, and she kept becoming distracted by it brushing against her forehead as she looked up and down between teachers and her notes or whatever else she had on her desk. She brushed it away from her eyebrows as Professor Wright talked, then bit her lip in irritation, aware that this meant her attention had slipped from the professor's every word and that she might have missed something important. Her English was fairly good now, she thought - she noticed at home that she thought Papa and Grisha were less fluent than she, now - but this was supposed to be difficult. She needed to pay attention.

The word marble confused her. She did not know it in English or German or French, and so when it hit her ears, her brain tried to understand it in Russian and thought it sounded like Professor Wright had just done a fairly horrible job of saying the word 'furniture.' Furniture was...what?

The object in his hand was clearly not furniture. It was a little stone or glass ball of some kind. This was not Transfiguration, and the topic was color changing charms, so it seemed unlikely that they were expected to make the balls look like pieces of furniture...especially since what Professor Wright was saying sounded like it was strictly about colors. She might have to ask her neighbor, though, which was a disappointment.

Better, however, to endure a small disappointment than a greater humiliation if she did the assignment completely wrong. She went up front, collected a ball, and returned to her desk. She brushed her hair back again, her new bracelet sliding down her wrist, the pale pink emeralds between pink gold links sparkling merrily. They almost matched the color of the light pink bow which was at the top of her head, holding back two sections of her hair while the fringe annoyed her by falling over her forehead and the last part annoyed her by sticking to her neck whenever she went out in the heat, though presently it was simply hanging in blonde curls. Her blue eyes were slightly apologetic as she looked at a neighbor and said, "Excuse me. May I ask you question about the class?" once they were both settled again.

16 Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw I'm confused about where the furniture came from. 1418 Katerina Vorontsov, Teppenpaw 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren

July 19, 2019 4:02 PM

The . . . furniture? by Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren

Heinrich was glad to be back at Sonora. Utah was not his home. He didn’t have a home anymore. Germany certainly wasn’t. He’d been given the chance to go back and it had terrified him. He had refused, categorically, to even entertain the notion of visiting that place. Hans had come back full of stories and with a new best friend in Freddie Zauberhexen. Heinrich couldn’t say if the friendship was mutual or not, but after they returned, Hans seemed to start most sentences with “Freddie says...” and “I can’t wait to tell Freddie...” Heinrich supposed it wasn’t too surprising. Hans had been living in the sole company of snakes and their uncle for three years. Of course he’d latch onto the first kid he met who was even remotely close to his own age. That Freddie was four years older and still seemed to have paid Hans some attention just guaranteed the hero worship.

Hilda, on the other hand, had seen for herself exactly what Heinrich had tried to warn her about. Hans seemed unaffected, but he’d been so young, and Utah was his home the way it never had been for Heinrich. Heinrich went there for summers and midterm, but if he’d grown attached to anywhere, it was here, at Sonora. Hans didn’t have a Sonora. Hans only had Utah. He didn’t even remember Germany very well. Karl was more father than uncle to him.

Hilda had two years in Utah, too, but she was older. She’d had friends, a life, that had been sundered and torn away. Utah was more home to her than it was to Heinrich, who had never really lived there before shipping off to boarding school, but it was still Germany that she thought of when she heard the word.

And the German home in her head didn’t exist anymore. He was pretty sure Uncle Karl had steered the family well clear of Zauberstadt, away from anyone who might recognize them from Before, but it didn’t matter. Hilda had seen, as Heinrich knew she would, like he had refused to experience, that Germany wasn’t theirs anymore.

They were Americans now.

So it was a bit of a relief to come back here, where nobody much talked about Germany, and only a handful of Beginners even spoke German (a far higher percentage than when he’d begun). The English didn’t sound as foreign as it once did, and he could now casually listen in on other people’s conversations without straining his understanding too badly. Sure, there were the occasional words he still didn’t know, words like hippogriff and hypothesis, but they were coming fewer and farther between. He figured he might even count as fluent now.

He looked around the intermediate Charms classroom, still a little taken aback by seeing Evelyn and her yearmates amongst them. Then he remembered he was a fourth year now, which made them third years, and therefore valid members of the intermediate class.

Next year, he’d be a fifth year, and Hilda a third, and it sort of boggled his mind that they could ever be on the same grade level. But then Professor Wright was going over their assignments, and he realized they weren’t. Each year group got a progressively more difficult task. It wasn’t that they were learning the same thing; they were learning different aspects if the same thing, each time refining on what they’d learned before, each time becoming more adept at the finer details.

It was like English. First he learned vocabulary. Then grammar. Now vocabulary again, but harder vocabulary, uncommon words and the more subtle shades of implication, use of colloquiums. It was all ‘learning English’ but the degree of mastery was completely different. The same was true for the different levels of Intermediates.

He looked over to Evelyn, trying to catch her eye, because color changing charms made him think of the red stone she probably still carried. His own fingers briefly sought and a brushed over the one she’d made (well, most of the one she’d made; he’d had to repair it over the summer and some of it wasn’t original material anymore). It wasn’t the same spell he’d used for that - his spell had been permanent, these were temporary - but they were the same general idea, and the research Professor Wright had mentioned for the fifth years might reference the charm he’d used to make his good wolf symbol. Though if they were going in the direction of illusions, they might just veer farther away from it. He wasn’t a fifth year yet, but he wondered if maybe he should do the research, too, just not turn in whatever paper they would doubtless have to write about it.

He might still write the paper, to organize his findings. He just wouldn’t turn it in. Because that would be weird.

He went up to get an earthworm and wondered if there was some reason Professor Wright wasn’t worried about the worms being let out of their containment but decided it was probably a combination of oversight and the fact that beetles would be harder to catch. He should still be careful not to let the worm get away.

He returned to the same desk he had started at, though the subject material had made him want to work beside Evelyn, and he kind of wanted to catch up with her after the summer anyway, but that was probably better done outside of class anyway. He’d get a better grade just working by himself and not distracting himself with unnecessary conversation.

That decided he sat down in his original seat with his earthworm and was almost immediately questioned by his neighbor.

Good wolf, he reminded himself. It would feed the good wolf to help out your younger classmates. You must feed the good wolf, not the bad wolf. Surely, not allowing a third year - especially one who might also be struggling with English, as he knew Katerina was also in the academic help group due to English being a second language - to ask a question about the class would both be feeding the bad wolf, and a betrayal of all of his Aladren House values.

“You may ask,” he told Katerina Vorontsov politely.

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren The . . . furniture? 1414 Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren 0 5

Katerina

July 19, 2019 4:20 PM

I don't think the furniture exists, but I'm not really sure. by Katerina

Katerina smiled with genuine relief when Heinrich Hexenmeister granted her permission to ask the question about her assignment. Perhaps asking another international student about it was not the best plan in the world, but at least she felt a bit less foolish this way, and anyway, two heads were better than one for sorting out the briar patch which was the English language.

"Professor Wright said a word," she said. "It sounds like Russian word mebel'...." She paused as she remembered something, a word she had briefly forgotten. "I think it means same thing as Möbel on German," she said. "But the lesson, it does not sound...other words do not sound like we are talking on Möbel. Your year does not have it, but did you hear? Or do you know English word for - these?" she gestured at the room's furnishings, trying to remember the word. She knew she knew the word, but it was just not one she used with any regularity and so it hovered on the tip of her tongue, just far enough back that she could not recover it. For some reason she was sure that the English word sounded nothing like the German and Russian words - or, now that she thought of it, the French word meubles - but how could she be sure? Perhaps they were cognates across all four languages and she was simply not as smart as she thought she was right now.

16 Katerina I don't think the furniture exists, but I'm not really sure. 1418 Katerina 0 5

Evelyn Stones, Pecari

July 19, 2019 4:43 PM

Well, it was nice for a minute. by Evelyn Stones, Pecari

Evelyn had been walking through school in a fog since it had begun, and this was the first lesson that really perked her up. She'd always appreciated Professor Wright, although not as much as Professor Skies of course, but this was a lesson that made her start to think he might slowly be on his way to first place in the academic realm.

Her hair and lipstick weren't the only parts of her life that were colorful (although she had started wondering whether it was a compensatory behavior like her social worker thought it might be) and she moved instinctively to wrap her fingers around the Quaffle rock in her pocket. It was undoubtedly being worn smooth by her continuous grasping of it and she wondered whether Heinrich had turned the whole thing red or just the outside.

She looked around to spot him and found that he was doing the same. It made her heart feel funny to think that someone cared enough to look for her and that maybe he'd seen what the lesson was and thought of her too. Whether it was her lipstick or her Quaffle rock that brought her to mind, she was glad for it.

When they got up to begin their lesson - Evelyn making her way to the box with marbles in it - and returned to various seats around the room to work alone or with others, Evelyn was almost excited. She had to wait in a short line as students picked their marbles and she was far too small to try to push her way to the front, so she shouldn't have been surprised when she turned around. She shouldn't have been upset when she turned around. But she'd really hoped . . . well she'd thought maybe Heinrich would even want to work with her. He had been looking for her, right? But he was sitting where he'd begun and was talking to Katya.

The familiar pang of disappointment was marred by the even more familiar pang of self-loathing. How could she have been so stupid as to have any hopes about working with Heinrich, or anybody else? How could she have let herself get her hopes up? How could she have overlooked the friends who had been there for her since the beginning and not even taken a second to think of working with Ness or Malikhi or Julius? It was a painful reminder that, even in the small things, she was the source of her own misfortunes.

Following Heinrich's lead, Evelyn went back to her original seat. She sat for a moment, staring at the marble. Blue was one of her favorite colors, only after orange. Blue was also one of the bi flag colors that Ness had taught her about. It also stood for boys in the traditional color schemes. It was also the color of the waves off the coast of her home town when the sun managed to push the clouds out of the sky. The world turned blue on those days.

Suddenly she hated blue. She detested the very nature of the marble being blue at all. She thought of orange and fire and sunsets and wished the marble was anything but blue. Beside her, another student took a seat. There were others around, but that didn't matter. This marble felt like a challenge, like the universe was taunting her.

"Colovaria," she growled instinctively, pointing her wand at the marble.

Her anger dissipated to be replaced with hard shock when the marble turned solidly red. It wasn't quite orange, but it definitely wasn't blue. She picked it up and held it aloft, staring into it.

"I did it," she murmured with wide eyes. Turning to the student next to her, she looked at them in awe. "I did it."

22 Evelyn Stones, Pecari Well, it was nice for a minute. 1422 Evelyn Stones, Pecari 0 5

Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

July 19, 2019 8:17 PM

Let's try to recapture the magic. by Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

Tatiana was in a blue mood, but not in the colloquial English sense. Instead, she was simply drawn to the color. Since she could not do much about the color of her uniform without drawing negative attention from the staff and possibly her own Housemates, however (they might not appreciate her seeming to waltz around in Aladren colors), she had taken the obvious next best thing and bedecked herself primarily in blue-gemmed jewelry.

Sadly, she wasn't sure how well her blue topaz parure - the stones alternating between a clear sky blue and a darker, moodier blue - held up against forest green. She often wore the bracelet or earrings along with a mix of other things, but the necklace was something she usually wore either with slightly lower necklines or mainly with her yellow and white dresses. Then, they looked very sunny and cheerful, but with the green, even with her necklace fastened as close to her throat as it would go so as many stones as possible were displayed against her skin instead of against the robe, she thought it gave her a more somber mien than she had really been aiming for. Soon, she thought, she would have to run back to her room and see if she could brighten things up a bit. Citrines, maybe, or her mixed golden and blue baroque Akoyas - she did love that strand. Or maybe both! And an opal or two never hurt anything....

For now, though, Professor Wright was in front of them and she doubted very much that he would appreciate her desire to cheer herself up by brightening up her look. Why, the man wore glasses - objects that should have allowed him to ornament even parts of the face one couldn't wear just anything on! - and they weren't even shiny! So she settled down, quill in hand, to pay attention, as she needed whatever he was saying in order to pass her CATS.

It was, she thought, her attention wandering, still strange to see her sister here. Katya was taking her new classes so seriously, it was rather endearing, though she did scold Tatiana already for not being serious enough....

Color-changing. She knew that spell already, but had to admit that turning a beetle pink was a new one. She noted the word coral, assuming it meant that shade of pink, since she understood most of what Professor Wright said to them besides that word. Beetles had a hard part, specifically, their outsides. Earthworms were soft. Of course, the little balls were hard, but they were not alive. Earthworms and beetles were both alive, which meant they were harder to work on. She had to suppress a snort when Professor Wright said that they wouldn't harm the bugs, though. He perhaps underestimated how much damage bad pronunciation could do....

However, she had cast this spell before, which meant she could cast it again on a new thing. She got a beetle, not flinching at being in close proximity to the bug (bugs did not trouble her), and carrying it back to a seat, which happened to be beside Evelyn. The other girl looked rather grimly intent on her marble, however, so Tatiana left her to it in favor of trying to turn her beetle pink until she heard Evelyn cast the spell in a way that sounded outright angry.

By the time she looked over, however, Evelyn's demeanor no longer seemed angry. Tatiana could see why. She had just cast the spell that quickly and turned the marble altogether a new color. Tatiana grinned at the younger girl, pleased for her.

"Ura!" she said, raising her two fists in acknowledgment of Evelyn's accomplishment. "Is good! Professor maybe make you do my job now," she joked.

OOC: For once, I have a specific reference in mind for Tatiana's jewelry. The blue topaz parure is essentially these pieces here, though Tatiana's versions would be rather smaller. The pearls she mentions but isn't wearing at this point would resemble what you'd have if you took one strand out of this this necklace (there not really being enough of Tatiana to support a four-strander even at 6mm).

16 Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari Let's try to recapture the magic. 1396 Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari 0 5

Evelyn Stones

July 20, 2019 4:31 PM

You're nice. Why are you nice? by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn blushed, feeling a little bad both that she was almost bragging and that she had only managed the task at all because she was upset. She doubted she could manage a coral beetle anytime, but especially when she was no longer as angry as she had been.

This meant that she was now an empty vessel, ready to have a new set of emotions take place, and she was surprised to find that curiosity and jealousy were taking their place. What was wrong with her? Why was everything so hard?

The problem was that Tatiana was beautiful and smart and fiery. Evelyn was none of those things. More than that, Tatiana was nice. She was being nice to Evelyn even now. Of course, the girl was in Pecari, so she was undoubtedly as little driven by kindness or friendliness as Evelyn herself was, but still.

"Thank you," Evelyn murmured. "I'm sure I couldn't do it again and I definitely couldn't do that. I'm not really sure how I did this," she said. She'd gotten used to having students of various linguistic backgrounds in her classes and spoke clearly, and at a more measured pace than she might have otherwise. The change was hardly noteworthy though, and she wasn't one to ramble at top speeds unless she was particularly anxious, so it worked out.

"He said that the spell wouldn't hurt the bugs, but how does he know that trying it out won't?" she added, grimacing a little at the bug in front of Tatiana. The Vorontsova girl's presence made her think again of the younger of the two, sitting with Heinrich, and she wondered what the universe's problem with her was.

22 Evelyn Stones You're nice. Why are you nice? 1422 Evelyn Stones 0 5

Tatiana

July 20, 2019 6:40 PM

I don't know. Should I not be? by Tatiana

Tatiana shrugged at the question about the beetles. "I think he knows not," she said bluntly. "I do this spell before, and it has good sounds in, but other spells - you have sound we don't make to speak po-Russkii," she complained. "It is - " and here she tried to make an 'h' sound, and ended up sounding more like she was wheezing. "We do not know it. I make much fire sometime."

Even this spell didn't correspond exactly to how she would make sounds in Russian. The difference between colo and kholo was small, something she might have almost imagined, but varia was a bit trickier. Varereeah, said Professor Wright. Var'ya, said Tatiana, if she didn't concentrate. There were multiple letters which made sounds which were kind of very close to the English sounds associated with the letters 'i' and 'e', but they weren't exactly the same, and Tatiana had learned that '-ia' generally meant a sound most similar to '-я' - one reason she had started refusing to write her name in English letters was because some teachers had seemed at least mildly perturbed by how she hadn't consistently transliterated it the same way from paper to paper.

She thought she could now stick to 'Tatiana' (the way her name appeared on school papers, though she privately thought Tateyana would have been more accurate) if she wanted to, but she didn't want to. Her name was her name - this was why, unlike Katya, she had gone to the trouble to train the teachers not to call her 'Miz Vorontsov.' She would answer if they called her Tatiana, Tatiana Andreyevna, Mademoiselle Vorontsova, 'Miz' Vorontsova, or even just Vorontsova, but she was not Vorontsov - she was Vorontsova. Papa and Grisha and Lyosha were Vorontsov, because they were males. She had to make many concessions to English, but she just simply didn't think her name ought to be one of them.

"I do not make fire today," she promised. "And you do it one time, you can do another," she added encouragingly, remembering Evelyn's demurrals about her own ability. "Once it is right, you can do again. Go, you try. Make more colors. Paper, marble - what you like. You can do this."

16 Tatiana I don't know. Should I not be? 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Gary Harper, Aladren

July 21, 2019 10:01 PM

Ooo.. Research opportunity by Gary Harper, Aladren

As usual Gary arrived at class early. He had debated this tactic, but changing it hadn't really led him to any great success last year so he had, for the moment, decided to abandon it. The idea last year was to get here early and wait in the hall, then upon watching Jasmine enter the room, he'd follow in close behind and conveniently get a seat next to her. This did not work out nearly as often as he had hoped. As more than a few of those attempts had lead to near disaster, he'd decided to just return to his normal routine. To that end, he was one of the first students sitting at his desk, scribbling away in his note book which he put away once Professor Wright began gathering the student's attention.

As the professor spoke, he recalled some information on the charm they were going to be working with today. He had attempted to use it instead of painting some of his miniatures. It hadn't really worked all that well, at least with the training and skill he had at that point. Trying to change the tiny figure's hair brown while leaving it's circlet yellow had proved... frustrating. Perhaps he'd have to give it another go once he got it down solid for class. The idea that this charm led to more complex illusions and such sounded fun and exciting. He couldn't wait to delve into that research! Once he had that figured out, he could create shifting battle maps with a wave of his wand at the table! No more simple drawings on grid mats or cumbersome terrain pieces!

Returning to his seat with his beetle, he gave it his best 'mad scientist' grin. "Now let's see what we have here. How do you feel about the color pink my new friend?" Glancing over the Colovaria pages in his textbook he gave his wand an swish and proclaimed "Colovaria!" The beetle instantly turned brown with a yellow circle about it's thorax. Gary started, then glared at it. "Oh, a wise-guy eh?" He looked at the pink square on the board again, trying to fix the color in his mind. "How about we try that again?" Once more he pointed the wand and spoke the word, this time it turned a lightish-red color, but it definitely wasn't coral pink. He sighed and turned to his neighbor, "Is your target being stubborn as well?"

2 Gary Harper, Aladren Ooo.. Research opportunity 1404 Gary Harper, Aladren 0 5

Ness McLeod

July 22, 2019 8:20 AM

How to make friends and influence people by Ness McLeod

Ness was an intermediate student! This was deeply exciting in and of itself because everything was bound to get harder and more academically rigorous but also because some of the DnD gang were in this class. There was Parker, who was a Quidditch player too, and Gary, who was a fellow Aladren (and an Aladren fellow). It felt pretty good to know two fifth years, especially such cool ones, and Ness was just as keen to impress them as the teachers.

Gary was more punctual than Parker, often arriving suitably early, and thus it was easy for Ness (who was also often in well ahead of roll call) to slip into the seat beside him.

Colour changing charms were a fun topic - and it was okay to think so, because even the Professor had said they were - although, as with many areas, there was a deeply technical field into which they fed. Ness was somewhat disappointed that only fifth years were being assigned a research project. Ness was definitely curious about illusions and other uses for colouring charms, such as dyeing one's hair - which perhaps sounded frivolous, but as a research subject there was searching for the point at which altering your appearance by magic shaded into casting a glamour or an illusion.

The third year dutifully collected a marble, glancing up when Gary asked about pink, surprised that he even needed to ask, only to find he was addressing his beetle instead. Rather than be disappointed by the lack of conversation, Ness admired Gary's academic rigour in getting straight into the work, and decided to follow his example. It would make a pretty poor impression if Gary looked over and Ness had done nothing.

The first task was to pick a colour that was 'not blue.' Ness quite liked purple but even though it was technically a different colour, it was not very far away. Professor Gray seemed to be going for oranges with the other year groups (Ness would not have been able to say whether coral was an orange or a pink, only that it was really vile, but based on the data from the fourth years, it seemed likely that it counted as orange) so that suggested it was a good enough target in terms of being far away from blue, even if it might not be very original. Originality had not been part of the mandate, though Ness did like to be it where possible. Maybe yellow then. Yellow was also really definitely not blue.

"Colorovia," the third year cast, pointing firmly at the marble and imagining bright yellow. A decent sized spot of it appeared, but it definitely didn't cover the whole marble. Gary was still talking to his project, so Ness also took the opportunity to jot down some initial interesting points regarding colour changing charms, illusions and glamours - namely the question that had asked itself inside Ness' head earlier, plus the possible answer that it was only a glamour or illusion if it altered people's mental states vs appearance based magics which worked on physical attributes. Ness casually left this in the middle of the table so that again, should Gary look up from his project, he would have further opportunities to understand that Ness was a serious academic worthy of the title 'Intermediate Aladren student.'

Gary broke off at that point, turning to Ness with a question.

"Mine is a lot less animated than yours" Ness observed, though figuring that 'stubborness' could be taken with some sense of tongue in cheek in this context, added "It does seem to prefer being blue. Maybe it's an Aladren marble and doesn't want to be turned Teppenpaw."

13 Ness McLeod How to make friends and influence people 1419 Ness McLeod 0 5

Evelyn Stones

July 23, 2019 2:19 PM

I haven't earned it. by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn grinned, appreciating the fire in her classmate. She hoped that was a Good Wolf thing to do . . . it seemed like it was okay, right? Maybe being blunt or harsh wasn't great, but appreciating the ferocity of a lovely young lady was something Good Wolves would like. She chuckled at Tatiana's attempt at whatever sound she was aiming for.

"If it makes you feel any better, I've been trying to learn German and it mostly just sounds like I am swallowing my own throat," she said, tapping her neck with one finger for emphasis. Everything seemed to be coming back to Heinrich today, which was a lot more aggravating than she had the brain power for. "My friend, Ness, is great at learning everything. I just can't quite get it down." That was better.

"Fire might be fun," she added, not wanting to stamp out any creative expressions. Or flames. Both were entertaining at least. "Thanks for believing in me," she said a little more quietly. "Do you want to try first? I don't want to distract you if I'm over here waving around like a madwoman. I don't think I could get coral . . . I was going for orange and got red. Coral looks hard."

22 Evelyn Stones I haven't earned it. 1422 Evelyn Stones 0 5

Tatiana

July 23, 2019 10:41 PM

You haven't earned unkindness, either. by Tatiana

Tatiana chuckled at the idea of German being like swallowing one's own throat. "I do not speak po-Nemetskii," she said. "German. I do not speak po-German. I try - but I learn words, not...how use them. English easier."

Given how broken her spoken English was, she knew this must sound like quite a statement. She understood English much better, though, than other languages short of Russian - it had made more sense in her head than the attempts that had been made to teach her German, or even French, though French worked better when she was using it to talk to her friend instead of in a classroom. She thought it was possible that it was simply because while English had stupid pointless articles in abundance, it at least didn't use them quite as absurdly often as German or French did.

"My sister Katya, she is like your friend," she observed. "With words, or - what she do - make picture on cloths," she said, trying to explain embroidery when she didn't know the English word for it. "Me, I do numbers good. I learn with earrings," she laughed. "I know bijoux. And I learn English, I learn balalaika, I dance. But Katen'ka, she is good at words, more than me."

She waved her hand at the notion that Evelyn could interfere with her work. "I know spell," she said. "I do spell before, other time." A beetle was harder than the things she had turned colors before (and why would she bother ever turning a beetle any color at all, much less one which no beetle in nature typically was, so far as she knew? Odd thing to do.), but she'd manage. "That not like coral, though," she observed, looking at the strip of color on the board which Professor Wright had given the fifth years as an indicator. "Katen'ka has coral necklaces. That one - less pink. None like that. Is hard, though. Pearls soft." Tatiana had read in a book once that coral was made of skeletons of dead sea creatures. Pearls came from inside sea creatures that were invertebrates. This intrigued her, especially since they were rather different - one of her tetyas put little sprigs of unshaped coral around her childrens' necks as amulets, and it showed clearly how much work must have gone into Katya's necklace. Their pearls, however, apparently came out of the ocean just as they were - except for the drill holes, of course, and being strung and fastened onto clasps.

"I try spell here. You pick what to turn other color," she decided. She lifted the lid off her little box and pointed her wand firmly at the little bug scurrying around on the inside. Pavel Alexandrovich, who brought the jewels to them on their birthdays and namedays for them to make selections, had told her once that there had been a time when extremely fashionable jewels had had beetle wings and kingfisher feathers and even leaves built right into them; Tatiana could not really imagine making the thing in front of her into a jewel, and so imagined there must be some other, more attractive species of beetle out there somewhere. Perhaps she could make this one look more like its distant cousins.

"Kholovar-eeah," she said, the word heavily accented, with the slight silent letter which might have occurred in Russian impinging on the end even as she focused on remembering the English pronunciation. A streak of reddish-orange - a shocking color, the sort which meant an insect was deadly in the adventure stories she had liked to steal from Grisha and read when she was younger - appeared down the middle of the beetle's back, but did not turn pink and did not spread far, beginning to fade in the middle even as it seemed to run out of pigment and stop spreading toward the edges. The scrambling legs and unappealing head seemed unaffected, which meant she had not hit the squishy bits, most likely.

"Eh, it begin," she said and shrugged. "Now you turn again," she encouraged Evelyn.

16 Tatiana You haven't earned unkindness, either. 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Gary

July 24, 2019 8:19 PM

Not to good at either of those by Gary

Gary wasn't terribly startled to find Ness sitting next to him. It seemed to happen fairly frequently. He generally attributed it to the fact that they knew each other from outside of class and therefore made in class interactions easier when teamwork was required. Still, he couldn't help but wish it was a certain lovely Crotalus in that seat, a damsel in distress that he could rescue from the terrors of classwork and then... Oh, who was he kidding? This was probably for the best, he couldn't embarrass himself as much like this.

He gave Ness a smile, "I guess you could test that theory, maybe it would prefer a different house. Have you tried red?" Upon turning back to his beetle, his eyes glanced over the notes that Ness had left in the middle of the table.

"It's something I've wondered about," he commented, indicating the notebook. "We did some color changing spells in transfigurations, and here we are in charms. What is the difference between the schools of magic? Does transfiguration actually change the objects color, while charms makes it look like it is a different color? That would make sense if the charms build upon bigger illusions, but it couldn't be a mind affecting spell. Otherwise the spell would need to alter the people viewing the object and not the object itself. Right? Instead, if the charm does cause a change in the object, but not an actual physical change... then it must be altering the light reflecting from the object to accomplish the change." He paused for a moment to mull it over, "Does that make sense? If so, does that change the mindset needed while casting the charm?" He contemplated his beetle again.

2 Gary Not to good at either of those 1404 Gary 0 5

Ness

July 26, 2019 7:08 AM

Have you tried science notes and correcting people? by Ness

"If it's a Crotalus marble, I'm sending it back," Ness grimmaced, as Gary suggested it might be affiliated to a different house. "I think I'll keep persuading it towards Teppenpaw.

"It makes sense but it's wrong," Ness stated bluntly when Gary suggested that you would need to alter a person's mind not an object to make them think things. It did not occur to the Aladren that a fifth year might not enjoy being so bluntly corrected by a third year. He was just wrong, and knowing you were wrong was useful, and then you learnt knew things, so Ness was being helpful. "There are charms and other magics to directly affect a person's thoughts or moods, such as cheering charms, but there's also enchantments you can place on objects that then affect people's thoughts. Think of what veela can do - they are working the enchantment but it affects another person's mind. And there's dark magics that can make an object like... call out to people so they want to touch it and get cursed. Or cake. Cake works like that too. It gives off its delicious cake smell and puts the idea into your head that you want to eat it. I mean, all cake does that, but I'm pretty sure I read that some stores enchant their cakes to be extra appealing. Humans are very suggestible.

"As for whether it's Transfiguration, I've never used Transfiguration to change just the colour of something. Sometimes it changes as a natural result of the difference between two objects - like a blue lemon would be wrong and would lose you marks - but sometimes it would just be a way of earning extra marks. Like, if you change a blue plate into a red cup, that would be worth more than a blue cup. But if you wanted a red china plate to be a blue china plate, you'd only ever use a charm. Transfigurations can involve colour changes but not everything involving colour change is a Transfiguration," Ness summarised, with a cheery smile.

"The point about altering light is interesting," Ness added, because it had been, "Isn't the colour we see a result of different frequencies of light hitting our eyes anyway though? So, what is the difference between changing its physical colour and what you said?" This was asked with genuine curiosity, head tilted to one side, as Ness sought clarification on the science, which Gary was bound to understand better. "Does colour even exist?" the third year added, in a dramatic whisper that suggested this might be somewhat facetious, though anyone who knew Ness at all would know that if there was an interesting answer to be given, it could be taken as a serious question.

13 Ness Have you tried science notes and correcting people? 1419 Ness 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

July 26, 2019 10:59 AM

You seem to be right by Heinrich Hexenmeister

Heinrich was not a strong enough English speaker to tune out when the teacher started talking about some irrelevant to him. He could not trust himself to know when to tune back in. Consequently, he had been paying just as rapt attention to the third year assignment as he had been to his own, so he knew immediately what Katerina was talking about.

He did not actually have the vocabulary to know what a marble was - that was a far too specific item that did not come up regularly in his day to day life - but what he did know was that it was different from Möbel, if only because he did know the English for Möbel and it was Furniture and nothing like Möbel. To his knowledge, there wasn’t even an English synonym similar to Möbel, because if there was, that would be one he’d be using to teach Hilda.

“Möbel is Furniture in English,” he told her, certain of that part of her question. “You use Murmeln, small blue balls,” he added, holding his thumb and forefinger apart at about the size of a marble. “I remember not the English word,” he apologized. He was reasonably certain, though, that this was her task based on the logical process of elimination after seeing the options at the front of the room when he had fetched his earthworm. Beetles and worms he knew from learning potion ingredients vocabulary, which meant the marbles had to be the third year assignment.

He wondered briefly if charms were like transfigurations in that it was more difficult to cast them on more complex targets, which might explain why third years had inanimate glass marbles while fourth and fifth years both had living creatures. Beetles had many more bits and pieces than worms did, too, which further indicated this was a distinct possibility, given that fourth years got a very simple creature pretty far down on the evolutionary scale, while fifth years got a fully developed insect.

He was pretty sure that also proved the difficulty came from the target’s complexity and not its likelihood to run away, because those marbles looked highly prone to rolling away with little provocation while the worms tended to just squirm a bit without moving very far or very fast.

Though casting at a moving target was doubtless an important skill, too, and he wouldn’t put it past the Head of Aladren to have factored that into his choice of things to color change.

“There is a box of the balls on the front desk,” he told Katerina, pointing to where he had seen them earlier. “I find the English word for Murmeln,” he added, reaching for his trusty German-English dictionary, which was rarely far from his side, even now that he was starting to feel confident in his new tongue.

OOC Disclaimer: Google translate used in the writing of this post.

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister You seem to be right 1414 Heinrich Hexenmeister 0 5

Evelyn Stones

July 26, 2019 12:57 PM

That's debatable. by Evelyn Stones

"What does the po- part mean?" Evelyn asked, having found an interest in languages that she hadn't expected since starting to work on German. She'd always wanted to be able to read religious texts in their original languages, but didn't quite fancy learning Arabic, Indian, Hebrew, and others, not to mention all the indigenous languages. "Is that okay for me to ask? I'm just curious."

Evelyn nodded, agreeing with the assessment of Katya. She didn't know the younger sister very well, but well enough to know that Tatiana spoke the truth about her. "Picture on cloths like painting? Or photography?" she clarified, not sure what other sorts of pictures people could make on cloths. She supposed there were probably lots of different ways but none were particularly coming to mind. Either way, Evelyn had never considered Ness and Katya to be particularly similar, and the idea made her smile. She always hoped Ness was happy, and knowing that a new friend might do the trick gave Evelyn something to hold on to.

Tatiana was very kind, which was very odd, but very nice. Evelyn was glad she'd ended up working with her, even if by accident, and she found herself smiling more than she'd expected during the conversation.

"There's also a blue that's called coral," she told her. "I don't think it's a very good word for a color in English. It isn't very specific."

The conversation about pearls versus coral was not something Evelyn could contribute much to but she nodded along eagerly, always happy to soak up new information about the world around her. After all, when the insides were churning and tumultuous, the outsides tended not to be. Or at least, they seemed not to be. Everything made much more sense on the outside, perhaps because Evelyn's eyes faced firmly that direction and never inside herself. She wondered what they would see if they did.

Watching the older student set about her work, Evelyn considered what color she'd like to try next. She wasn't usually pushed to try so hard in class, except when she was with Ness who always encouraged her to do her best work. They'd always had a good system of working with lots of different people in classes though, because they would likely work together outside of class on their own. This meant that Evelyn rarely had to try her hardest in class, and was rarely convinced to do so. If she tried her hardest, there was a greater chance of being disappointed when it failed, and jut was hardly worth it.

Today, though, she was being encouraged to try, and the spell was about colors. This was a class made for her practically, and certainly a spell she would use in her free time. She wondered whether hair could be turned color this way, and whether it was safer to do pointing at the top of her head or at the ends of her hair.

She settled on green. She would have liked to go for grey, but suspected that didn't count as a color change so much as a color sap. She also had a lot of green around her in their robes, which made it a bit easier to visualize. It was a bit dangerously close to blue, but she was sure it would be distinct if she did it right.

"You were very close," Evelyn told Tatiana as it shifted to her turn again.

Taking a breath, Evelyn wondered whether she should try to bring up some strong emotion again. She wasn't angry so much now, but hurt and embarrassed still lingered close at hand. That wasn't as strong as the sense of caution in her chest, like she was sitting at a cliff's edge, watching the churning waves below. She had no intention of diving in, but thought it might be a nice place for a swim some day in the future. For now, she was just watching. Watching and feeling.

Rather than green, another color came to mind. The rich pink-purples of foxglove, one of her mother's favorite flowers to look at (and not touch, of course) came to mind, as did the fields dotted with it around their home. Well, what had been a home once.

"Colovaria," she whispered, looking only at the marble and willing it to change. A neat pink-purple, a little pinker than foxglove, spread across the marble, much to Evelyn's amazement. It didn't cover the entire marble, but the uneven line between where it covered and where it didn't reminded Evelyn so much of the cliffs and beaches at home that she suspected it was not quite an accident, even if she hadn't meant to do it.

"I've never been able to do this sort of thing twice before," Evelyn said, looking up at Tatiana with nearly watery eyes. Nearly.

22 Evelyn Stones That's debatable. 1422 Evelyn Stones 0 5

Katerina

July 26, 2019 2:55 PM

I often am. by Katerina

Furniture. That was the word. She had learned it, of course, in her English lessons, and ran across it occasionally when she read stories written in English, but she was more likely to use the terms for individual items of furniture than she was to talk about furniture as a concept, and therefore the word had just...slipped her mind.

"Danke," she said. "Englisch ist seltsame Sprache." English is strange language. "Das Wort fast gleich auf Russisch, Französisch und Deutsch - dann 'furniture'." The word almost same in Russian, French, and German - then 'furniture'

"Ich wusste von den Bällen, aber nicht, was ich sollte anfangen," she added. "Ich wollte sicher sein, dass es keine Möbel." I knew about the balls, but not what I should do. I wanted sure to be, that is no furniture. "Vielen Dank."

She felt a little bad about Heinrich getting out his dictionary, as she of course could have brought her own. She hated to do that, though - it felt like an admission of inadequacy to show so clearly that she needed help to get by, and now that she was in intermediate classes, she really really did not want to rely on it. She was fairly sure, after all, that they would not let Tatiana have aids of that kind during her CATS this year, and anything her sister could do, Katya tended to assume she could do better, short of gem identification and climbing things.

"Only color, then. Very good," she said, drifting back into English. She tried to speak one language at a time, but that got difficult, especially when her conversation partner also flitted between languages. She knew that Tatiana sometimes found the misunderstandings that came from her and her friends speaking multiple languages at once together hilarious, but she just found that kind of thing awkward...however, as long as each sentence was mostly in one language, she thought they should manage without any incidents like Tatiana starting a sentence to one of their cousins and slipping in a few Chinese words instead of Russian ones! Even Tatiana had been flustered by that, when their cousins had teased her about forgetting how to speak proper Russian, and forgetting her motherland altogether to be an Amerikanka.

OOC: Also used Google translate, then mangled it a bit to fit in with Katya not being a native German speaker. She dropped an 'eine' from her first sentence, then put the word order in her second closer to Russian grammar than German. The italicized text is an overly literal translation, vaguely aiming at illustrating that her German is awkward but reasonably understandable.

16 Katerina I often am. 1418 Katerina 0 5

Tatiana

July 28, 2019 9:08 PM

You've certainly not done anything like that to me. by Tatiana

Tatiana paused, trying to think through word stuff. "Is okay, that you ask," she said, to fill the silence as she worked on it in her head. "I think...bah. It means speaking language," she said. "Maybe...shows you speak language, not talk about type of person?" she said.

She knew this was probably not the best explanation, but she didn't think about the intricacies of Russian grammar, much less how they related to English grammar, especially not recently. Anton Petrovich had stressed that kind of thing in her English lessons, but she no longer had those every day and had never, as far as she could remember, covered this specific issue back when she had.

"No, no, no," she said, shaking her head. "No. She uses...little...sharp thing. She takes little...cloth stuff, puts in big cloth. Makes pictures in colors. Like this," she said, miming sewing, albeit not particularly adeptly. Tatiana had always hated sewing and avoided it as far as possible, baffled by how Anya and Katya in particular could seem to genuinely enjoy it.

"Eh? Blue?" said Tatiana, wondering if she knew what she thought she knew about words. Coral as a shade of blue? That didn't make sense to her, but she knew she knew her words about jewelry. "Huh. I must look, find out about this," she said. It was rare indeed there was a jewel she had not heard of, or at least a variation on a jewel; she had read about ones that she hadn't even seen, even though the booksellers seemed to think it was very strange that a young girl should order those to read and even Mama and Papa sometimes shook their heads at it, even though they were the ones who encouraged them all to know the value of their collections. She was quite sure she knew hers much better than any of her sisters knew theirs.

"Is good!" she said when Evelyn got another result, this time a pretty shade of pink. It was not as extreme as the first transformation, but it was still very good. "See? I tell you. You do once, you do twice, yes? You do good."

16 Tatiana You've certainly not done anything like that to me. 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Gary

August 03, 2019 7:28 PM

Hmmm... that sounds more likely. by Gary

Gary considered Ness' points for a few moments, "That's a good point. Especially about the psychology and suggestibility of humans in general. The enchantments that you would put on cake, or something of the sort would change the cake itself. Those changes would be ones that would appeal to the desires and such inherent in humanity. So, you're not changing anything with the people you are affecting, you are just using an enhanced signal to pierce through any sort of built up resistances against those signals." He thought again for a moment before continuing, "However, all of those examples you have cited work upon driving some sort of suggestible desire within a person, they make you want something. Would the same technique work for something like a color change? Is there any driving desire for me to want to see your marble as yellow instead of blue?"

He nodded at Ness' question about wavelength frequencies. "On a practical level there isn't really any difference between the actual color change and the charm altering the waveform after the light reflects off the object. The difference really only applies at an academic level and may change your results depending on the nature of the magic used. If the transfiguration is a permanent change, it would require no more magic to sustain it, and it would need the same type of magic to convert it back to it's original color. If it is a charm that is causing the change, then there must be a sustained magical field around the object that could end when the magic subsides. Dispelling the charmed enchantment would return the object to it's original state while trying to tranfigure it to another color would have no result at all." He stopped again to mull over the situation some more. "What do you think? It makes me wonder how much scientific research has be applied to how magic actually works."

2 Gary Hmmm... that sounds more likely. 1404 Gary 0 5

Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw

August 10, 2019 9:43 AM

Where? by Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw

Ordinarily, Dorian rather liked Charms, especially ones like this which worked on something aesthetic. He had always had a flair for the spells that required him to make things pretty, whether it was charms or design work in Transfiguration, and this was a talent that had been solidly cemented by the concert last year. Admittedly, that had been more than needing a few spells that had worked on visual elements, it had required him to design whole set ups and work all kinds of magic that were, on their own, nothing to do with how things looked, but which had come together to make something beautiful. He had enjoyed the whole process, and it was actually something he would, if absolutely forced at wand point to admit to having talents, say that it was something he was quite good at.

Today's charms lesson though, in spite of being on the aesthetic side, was scoring about 1/3. Yes, colour changing was fun and pretty, but Professor Wright had given them something really ugly to work it on. He supposed being a fourth year was worse, but colouring a beetle wasn't high up his list of priorities. They were skittery and unpleasant and he couldn't see why he would care what colour they were, unless they had those warning patterns that suggested they were dangerous. Professor Wright also produced a square of their target colour on the board, and it was hideous. Dorian really wasn't a big fan of orange or pink, and neither was improved by being mixed with the other. The only shred of upside he could find was that he now resented using a beetle less. It would have been a shame to take something that was a beautiful or pleasant object and ruin it with that disaster of a colour. Unfortunately, the reverse did not hold true - he didn’t think it was a bonus to consolidate all the horror into one place by making the beetle a horrible colour. It wasn’t the beetle’s fault it was kind of yucky, and a lick of paint might have brightened it up and improved it.

He made his way to the front, dutifully picking up a beetle. He considered taking a couple of marbles too, so he could perfect the colour before trying it on a moving and probably unco-operative target. However, he didn’t want to look like he was doing a third year task. It was easy enough for people to make jokes about his height without him doing things like that, and he didn’t want anyone to think he was stupid or incompetent. He would find some items in his bag to practise on. Preferably ones he didn’t care about too much, even though this wasn’t meant to be permanent. Deciding he didn’t hate any of his possessions enough to risk it, he simply took a spare piece of parchment, and drew himself a row of squares for practise. He focussed his eyes on the colour on the board, trying to find some genuine will to make anything that colour. He wanted an O. He supposed that gave him motivation.

“Colovaria,” he cast, aiming his wand at the square. He looked down. He looked back between his square and the board. Maybe his was slightly more orange? He completed the row of squares. There was a little variation. One seemed a little more pink, one a little more orange, but it was all undeniably close to the colour Professor Wright wanted. He played around with a new row of squares, trying for different effects, and managed (after several tries, and by giving himself some guidelines in pencil) to make one that shaded from orange, through the shade on the board, and out into a more definite pink again. He contemplated drawing another row of squares, or maybe something else, but it was becoming undeniably obvious that he was replicating the shade that was on the board almost exactly and with very high consistency. He really had no excuse not to do the beetle.

Maybe, maybe if he just did it, and handed it in, he could ask Professor Wright for something more interesting or pleasant to work with. He was reluctant to voice anything that sounded like a criticism of the lesson, but he was particularly interested in the shading effect he’d achieved on his parchment and wondered how that might be expanded. Perhaps he’d be allowed to turn some things turquoise. If Professor Wright was such a fan of these in between shades, then he could have set them turquoise. It was in between green and blue, both of which he was fond of in their own right, and it was a very pleasant end result - somehow bright and cheering yet calm at the same time, and so very much more pleasant than coral.

He pulled the box towards him with a sigh, preparing to lift the lid. Happily though, before he could do so, someone spoke to him.

13 Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw Where? 1401 Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw 0 5