Both are so pretty. on Defense Against the Dark Arts

Prof. Isis Carter

March 16, 2015 12:51 AM

A Tale of Fire and Ice [Years III-V] by Prof. Isis Carter

Over the years, Isis had rather developed a love-hate relationship with the holiday season. It was a time for family, but for her--as far as she was concerned--that was limited to a single member, an incarcerated brother. But she supported the things Christmas stood for, the theme of kindness and giving as well as its religious foundation. Isis was not very observant in her religious beliefs, but she felt things very strongly. And while New Years held no spiritual significance, it was a new opportunity to succeed, to do better than one had the year before. Not to mention this was the first in a long time she was actually employed, and she was thankful.

It was good to see the students come trickling back in, some perhaps more ready to return than others (the Aladrens, she imagined, were a bit more gung-ho than the Pecaris, for example), but whether or not they liked it, class was now in session. Or it would be in just a moment, as Isis habitually delayed class a couple minutes to allow stragglers to get seated. She wasn’t a stickler for timeliness as long as they came in and got settled. It was more important that they learned the material than suffer for minor tardiness.

Of course, today there were some small distractions: fire. Mid-sized flames burned systematically around the room, gobbling up the firewood with a dull crackle. “Apologies for the heat,” Isis joked. “But rest assured it won’t be this way for long. Today, you’ll be learning Glacius.” As per routine, the incantation and all relevant material appeared as notes on the chalkboard behind her. “This is an ice-producing spell that can help cool salamanders or, as you might imagine, put out fires.”

“To that end,” Isis elaborated, “I’ll need you to pair up and tackle the flames because, honestly, to have enough open flames for all of you in one room would have been too many for me to watch at once.” The young substitute felt that honesty was the best policy and saw no reason to disguise the reason: that many fires would have simply been unsafe. “You’ve just got to decide who’s going first and once they’ve succeeded, use Incendio to relight the fire.”

“That’s about it,” concluded Isis. “No fancy wand movements or anything. Just point and recite. But, ah, a small warning,” she paused briefly, glancing around. “Obviously, don’t catch yourselves on fire. Be careful. If you do, you better hope I see you or your partner is very good at the spell.” She sounded a bit like she was joking, but Isis very much meant her warning. She was offering these kids a lot of freedom and opportunity to make bad choices, but she was trusting them to do what they needed to carefully and deliberately. “Go ahead and get started, and again: be careful.”

OOC: In case you missed it, please do not catch yourself on fire. Isis is very alert, so if you do manage to catch yourself on fire--and these fires aren’t that big; you would have to stand very close--she would see you and put you out very quickly. Be kind to one another and send me lots of rule-abiding, long, creative posts. Have fun!

Subthreads:

Who wants to be my friend today? by Chloe Jareau, Pecari with Ava Fletcher, Aladren

Why can't we have moderate temperatures? by Isaac Douglas, Crotalus

Both are so pretty. by Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw with Liliana Bannister, Pecari

Winter is coming. by Serena Brockert, Teppenpaw

12 Prof. Isis Carter A Tale of Fire and Ice [Years III-V] 31 Prof. Isis Carter 1 5

Chloe Jareau, Pecari

March 19, 2015 9:42 PM

Who wants to be my friend today? by Chloe Jareau, Pecari

Chloe sat as still as was within her nature at her Defense Against the Dark Arts desk. What was within her nature was her playing with her long blonde hair, fixing her eye make up (a new look of subtle black liner around her eyes with black mascara that she found herself growing fond of), or her leg was visibly shaking not out of nerves but out of reserve energy that did not like to be stifled. There was no hiding the fact that Chloe had attention problems. She tried her best to do well, but sometimes it was just too hard to do.

For instance, today, the room felt stifling because of the random flames that were spread throughout the room. Chloe wasn’t sure if it was actually the fire or just her body believing it was hot because of the fires just being there, but it didn’t matter. Her whole mind was focused on the heat that she could barely register what the lesson for the day would be. It was terribly difficult for her to not feel like a waste of space whenever she was around her brother, Ji-Eun, or the other Aladrens because they were all about the studies while she was just barely holding on. This was often why she enjoyed chatting with Malcolm. He was definitely smarter than her, but he never seemed to talk above her or make her feel like she was an outcast for not being bookish. She would never imply that any of her friends purposefully did those things, but it was quite obvious that she was not on the same level as they were with that sort of thing.

As Chloe thought of the heat, she thought of her parents. They either were still in Hawaii or were just home from Hawaii, she couldn’t remember the dates of their trip. It was a gift from her older sister to their parents. Chloe was jealous. She would have loved to have gone on a trip like that. Even though her parents had protested the gift at first, Chloe knew that they were grateful to Ayita for the opportunity and for the alone time. After five kids together and one who was deathly ill, Kiva and Chloe’s dad never were alone. Chloe knew that Angel was in good hands with Ayita and with Melissa (Kiva’s mom and their grandmother) looking after him, but she was worried about Harper. She had never been without one of her parents around. Hopefully, she wasn’t being a terror at home.

The sudden movement around her had Chloe back in her own space again and she realized that they were dismissed to work on their own. Chloe sighed. She had no idea what they were supposed to be doing. This was not good at all. She thought about just sidling up next to her brother to piggy off of him, but he was already busy with someone else. At least, by the look of it, they were allowed to work in pairs. Spotting a friend, Chloe stood and moved through the crowd of peers to reach them. Planting a large smile across her face, Chloe reached her friend, “Hey Friend!” She greeted, “Want to work together on this?” She asked with a sliver of hope in her voice.

6 Chloe Jareau, Pecari Who wants to be my friend today? 0 Chloe Jareau, Pecari 0 5

Isaac Douglas, Crotalus

March 31, 2015 8:19 PM

Why can't we have moderate temperatures? by Isaac Douglas, Crotalus

Heat, unfortunately for someone who lived and studied in the places that he did, had never been one of the things Isaac handled well, and he was sure he felt sweat begin on his pale forehead within a minute or two of entering the Defense Against the Dart Arts classroom. Resisting the urge to wipe it with his sleeve – that was repulsive, plus he was supposed to be above noticing things like how the classroom was uncomfortable – he glanced distrustfully around at the fires, not sure what they were for and pretty sure that he didn’t actually want to know. He had never cared for fire.

He still had more than a year before his CATS, but Isaac was already thinking about what classes to take and what classes to drop in his last two years at school. His father said that this one was antiquated, not really relevant to the civilized world, but Isaac wasn’t so sure. For one thing, there were always going to be dark creatures around – to him, the world outside of buildings (and their grounds, he supposed, when necessary) entirely contained by expensive magical wards was a dangerous place to be avoided at all costs. Isaac had never been brave and never wanted to find out if he had the ability to be brave. Bravery made for lousy drinking songs and worse lifespans. If he did have to go outside sometime, though, he wanted to have the ability to protect himself from all the stuff out there that wanted to eat him even if there weren’t any dark wizards who wanted to do worse. Which was, to use half-remembered language from essay-writing lessons he’d had before school, a premise he was not sure he bought, anyway.

The problem with keeping the class, though, was that learning to protect himself meant learning everything he might need to protect himself from. Which was a lot of things, all of which, from the little he already knew about them, were terrifying. Isaac liked sleeping, which made learning just how many ways there were to die and voluntarily doing more homework in the two years of really unreasonably hard classes both seem like poor decisions. It was a conundrum, one he was glad he still had a year to work out the solution to.

The purpose of the fires did not help him with that. Instead, they were to facilitate the use of more spells he was sort of surprised to learn here instead of in Charms. Elemental magic was, he thought, even more neutral than most magic; whether a fire or a burst of ice was good or bad was entirely down to what a wizard did with it. Maybe fire was more dark-aligned, though, since that was what they were defending against; made sense, with its difficult-to-control nature.

Ice…he wondered if they were producing ice, water and freezing it at the same time, freezing water in the air and pulling it together somehow, or actually doing something to the hot object. He dismissed the thought when Professor Carter warned them about catching themselves on fire, feeling as though he wanted to shiver despite the uncomfortable warmth; that wasn’t funny.

It was also a warning he didn’t need. There had never been any chance of him getting any closer than he had to. Fire…jumped, sometimes, just on its own, in fireplaces or torches. It would presumably jump even more if something hit it or the lighting spell was overdone. He just wished he didn’t have to count on someone else to be halfway sensible and not get them both in the hospital wing. He decided to try to stake his claim to a fire and let someone else approach him; maybe he could pull it all off and get clear before they started.

This didn’t work out as well as he had hoped, as he and someone else, possibly with the same idea, got to a fire at the same time. “Do you care who goes first?” he asked, resigning himself to the situation.

16 Isaac Douglas, Crotalus Why can't we have moderate temperatures? 273 Isaac Douglas, Crotalus 0 5

Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw

April 08, 2015 8:57 PM

Both are so pretty. by Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw

The holidays had been amazing for Portia. She was truly in her element at parties and loved every second. The dancing, the dressing up, everything. She'd even been introduced to Joseph Rosenthal, an attractive wizard that her family was looking match her with. The fifth year wouldn't mind that a bit. She'd already said that would be fine with her, she'd found him to be a gentleman.

Besides, all Portia had ever wanted was to be betrothed. She was one of those girls who'd been planning her wedding for as long as she could remember. Probably since at least Nora's betrothal which for her sister had been at age twelve. Frequent weddings of family members had only made the subject come more to mind.

She had spent hours of her life sketching her dream wedding dress-well, dresses really, because she'd sketched a lot of different ones, just for fun-and thinking about the flowers, the decor, the food. What her bridesmaids would wear, though she didn't know who she'd have fulfilling the role, given Portia didn't really have close friends. Probably her cousins and sister, maybe Liliana Bannister, whom the Teppenpaw didn't honestly know, but was Joseph's cousin.

One thing she didn't think much about, that was rarely ever on her mind, was schoolwork. Not that she never did it or did too poorly on it, but it was Nora's thing, not her own. The fifth year felt it was important to differentiate oneself from one's family members. Plus, well, she just wasn't that interested in academics.

The DADA classroom was much too warm today, which made sense with all the fires. Portia wrinkled her nose. It seemed like her classes were always a mixed bag. There were the nice, fun, lessons with charms and spells, but others required getting messy or sweaty or required them to do other unpleasant things, like have balls come speeding towards you and try to stop them using magic. Fun for those who played Keeper, not so much for her.

Today was, apparently, going to be a sweaty one. Portia was from South Dakota, which was not exactly known for it's warmth. Therefore, getting fires to freeze was an utterly necessary spell to learn. She tended to prefer that kind of lesson. Or one where she could make things prettier.

She walked over to the closest person and asked "Care to work together?" There weren't too many people she would be bothered by working with, just Oliver, and she certainly wasn't talking to him.

11 Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw Both are so pretty. 262 Portia Dobson, Teppenpaw 0 5

Serena Brockert, Teppenpaw

April 29, 2015 4:47 PM

Winter is coming. by Serena Brockert, Teppenpaw

Serena's holiday had been full of parties and included being hit on by Amity's future brother-in-law, Justin Tremont at her cousin's engagement party. Which would have been flattering had he not also been flirting with just about every other girl in the room. She didn't want that from a guy, it didn't make her feel special, and she wanted a guy who did. Had a deep yearning for it, in fact.

Still, while whether or not she was ready for classes to resume in general was up for debate, Serena could honestly say she wasn't ready for DADA. She did not like this subject. It could be dangerous and scary. The Teppenpaw didn't like things that were dangerous and scary.

Yes, Serena had had a lovely moment of glory last year when she'd actually managed to take on the boggart, making people laugh at Carrie's....uglification. (Yes, she knew that wasn't a word, but it fit better than disfigurement which sounded more like someone's actual features had been displaced than just them being made to look ugly.) However, she still found Defense...rather scary. Besides, even after the boggarts, she'd been terrified of Carrie finding out and facing her wrath. Even though if her cousin had done something Arabella would have actually disfigured her, not just uglify. The real thing was still terrifying.

But she was gone and would never bother them again...hopefully. A truly comforting thought.

It still didn't matter. Serena knew that even if she mastered spells for Defense, she'd panic if she was ever in real danger. She wasn't athletic or quick on her feet or all that brave. She'd prefer to play things safely. Not go traipsing about places where dark and scary things lived, no making enemies that she'd need to protect herself from, because if worse came to worse, she wasn't sure she could.

The classroom was hot today, but still the fourth year felt relieved to hear what the lesson was going to be. Nothing jumping out at her. The fire would stay in one place and if it was contained, it wasn't all that scary. With a relieved smiled on her face, Serena walked over to approach someone who seemed nice. "Would you like to work with me please?" She asked.

11 Serena Brockert, Teppenpaw Winter is coming. 272 Serena Brockert, Teppenpaw 0 5

Ava Fletcher, Aladren

May 03, 2015 4:15 AM

I will, if you'll have me! by Ava Fletcher, Aladren

It had been a rather long day. The letters Papa had been sending her were declining in quality and she was worried for her grandfather—he seemed to be hiding something from her, though she wasn’t sure what exactly. Sometimes she would ask him if he wanted her to come home or if he wanted her to write to Mother and ask her to come home but each time he would politely refuse and then joke that she worried more about him than her schoolwork. These, combined with what appeared to be light-hearted descriptions of boring days concerned Ava. The thoughts weighed on her heavily and more often than not, recently, her forehead was puckered and her mind distracted. Even her ability to dress herself had gone downhill in the recent weeks. Thankfully the school robes covered her abominable choices in colors which clashed terribly, but this was not something that she particularly noticed as she went about her day.

As Ava walked to Defense Against the Dark Arts, she worried the hem of her sleeves. Papa’s last letter had been over three days ago. Normally he wrote her daily to make sure she was kept up with their little town even though she couldn’t care less about the people he was writing to her about. She knew he did it because it padded the letters down and he worried about people at school thinking she didn’t have anyone at home so he liked his letters to her to be extra-long. The intentions were sweet even if she had told him several times it wasn’t necessary. She was so lost in thought about her grandfather and his weird habits that she didn’t even noticed entering the Defense classroom until the crackling of flames and odd heat of the room caught her attention.

The lesson for Defense that day looked…interesting. Ava was excited to be playing with fire—quite literally, and was even more excited that the spell they would be using could help to cool things down. She was certain that later on in life at whatever Healing job she chose to pursue there would be a patient with a raging fever in desperate need of Glacius. Even the word felt cool but Ava wasn’t sure if that was because it was so similar to the word for glacier. Obviously the two stemmed from the same root word and it was times like this that made her a little homesick for Papa.

Once Professor Carter allowed them to find partner, Ava stood to the side a little. She was tired and not really in the mood to be bouncy like she normally was but before long a familiar voice called out to her and she turned, smiling. “Hey!” Ava chorused back, ecstatic that Chloe had chosen her out of the crowd to partner with. A light blush tinged her cheeks but Ava was certain that was because of the warmness of the room. “Ready to tackle this fire?” She gestured to her right where one of the flames was coming up out of the ground.

She liked Chloe, finding in the other girl a sort of kindred spirit. The other Aladrens though fun were sometimes a little too preoccupied with things Ava didn’t particularly care about. Chloe on the other hand dressed cool and liked to have fun. Plus, she was pretty nice—Ava remembered back to one awful time in which she had ruined all her carefully written out notes with paint and Chloe had recommended she talk to her brother, Emery, about them because he took good notes.

OOC: Apologies for the fuzzy-time :) I had this written out awhile ago but lost it somehow...

10 Ava Fletcher, Aladren I will, if you'll have me! 0 Ava Fletcher, Aladren 0 5

Liliana Bannister, Pecari

May 05, 2015 1:33 AM

So is fuzzy-time... by Liliana Bannister, Pecari

Defense Against the Dark Arts was normally Liliana’s favorite class. The fast-paced work and the feeling of accomplishment after spending time working to “defeat” something pleased her. The type of concentration she put in was different than that of her other course work, and the results somehow instilled a greater feeling of power in her than in normally did. Even though Charms and sometimes even Transfiguration were more…instantaneous in that visually they showed progression, Defense was a class that interested Liliana because she felt as though on some level the spells learned during that period were more practical. She wasn’t the sort of girl who would be upset if her ribbon was blue rather than purple and she also didn’t think she’d ever be in a situation in which she wouldn’t want to just buy a teapot than use an animal in her garden as one. Certainly she saw the uses if one didn’t have enough money, but she was lucky enough to have never been in such a situation. Defense, on the other hand, no amount of money could buy one’s ability to protect one’s self, she thought. But no matter how she usually felt about Defense, that day her mind was elsewhere.

Now that Liliana was getting to the age where she could appreciate a good love story, the antics of her cousins were beginning to make sense to her. Over the summer she’d taken part in what she probably would classify as her first fling relationship, and it had been nice. She and Vètil still wrote to each other occasionally, but she really didn’t feel anything more towards him than friendship and occasional lust. He had been a fun person to be with—bright and happy and always up for something active. However, she couldn’t help but note the differences between her sapless relationship with Vètil and Atlas’ over the top relationship with Ann Marie. At times it made her seriously question the validity of the summer, but then after seeing Atlas get all moony-eyed over something that reminded him of Ann Marie, she quickly got over that realizing that she preferred the quick, easy relationship (if it could even be called that) between herself and Vètil, their silent agreement to keep things casual and to pick it up again each time they saw each other. They were just dating, nothing serious, nothing binding and Liliana liked the feeling of not being tied down. Levi, of course didn’t approve, but then again Levi had never really approved of any of her relationships with guys, even the friendships she had formed with Atlas and Duncan Brockert.

The idea was ludicrous, really, she thought to herself. Out of everyone, Levi was one of the last people who ought to be lecturing her on proper conduct. Ever since he had met his most recent girlfriend, Camille, he had been so preoccupied with witches and exchanging stories with his friends and the other cousins that Liliana was certain out of the entire Rosenthal clan she was the most guiltless when it came to acting too old. Despite the teasing she had gotten when introducing Vètil to the cousins, teasing even from Levi she was pleased to discover that one cousin in particular had refrained from joining in. That, however, was likely due to mild Joseph’s otherwise occupied mind. Liliana’s eyes drifted over the heads of a few of her classmates before settling in on the witch in question. She smiled to herself, happy for her mild cousin that he had found someone he liked, someone to enjoy the same sorts of things in life as he did. It was good.

When Portia approached her and asked to partner, Liliana smiled graciously. She had wanted to talk to the witch who had ensnared Joseph’s heart but had been trying to come up with a way to do so in a non-conspicuous manner as she figured prying might offend her cousin’s delicate sensibilities. However, she couldn’t help it if Portia approached her and asked her to work together, could she? So, she smiled politely and responded; “I would be delighted to.” She left out the part where she had spent the beginning of Defense spacing out and actually had no idea as to why there were flames scattered around the classroom. When she had first walked in, she had noticed them and it had been enough for her to want to know what the lesson was, but the flames had reminded her of a quote about love Levi had once spouted off the top of his head at the beginning of his time with Camille, so Liliana’s mind had begun to wander.

“Would you like to go first?” she asked, stepping back so that Portia was now closest to the nearest flame and it would be inconvenient for her to try her hand at a spell she didn’t even know she was supposed to be trying.

10 Liliana Bannister, Pecari So is fuzzy-time... 274 Liliana Bannister, Pecari 0 5