To be probed or not to be probed, that is the question. on Defense Against the Dark Arts

Professor Pye

June 12, 2015 4:13 AM

Advanced DADA (Years VI & VII) by Professor Pye

Advanced Defense Against the Dark Arts was Alfie’s second class of the day and though he had only been teaching it for a week it was already his favorite of the three that he taught. Since the students he worked with were older, he felt as though they could better appreciate the hands on learning as they were at that stage in their life where they wanted to be in charge, where they wanted to be adults already. He’d certainly felt that way when he’d been a sixth and seventh year at least. In addition to that, he’d been made to understand that the sixth and seventh years were allowed to choose which classes they wanted to keep taking. To him, that meant all the students in his classroom wanted to be there. And since he himself didn’t want to be there, a classroom full of students who had actively chosen to be there made him happy—it meant he wasn’t wasting his time.

So, because of Alfie’s hands-on approach and staunch belief that the only way one could be ready to take care of oneself in the crazy wizarding world that existed outside the safe walls of Sonora, he had decided to start the sixth and seventh years off with a running start. That day after his Intermediate class was dismissed, he went on a walk through the Labyrinth Gardens and collected a selection of very smooth stones from a fountain he’d found in the middle of it. He dried the stones off, brushing away the strange, coarse hairs that clung to some of the stones. The day’s lesson was to be on Legilimency and Occlumency. When Alfie’s father had taught him the two skills, skills that he had come to find to be extremely useful during his days as an Auror, he had always found that it was easiest for him to imagine his mind as a blank slate, a lake on a day void of any wind to cause ripples or waves, a smooth stone.

Though he desperately thought that teaching the students Legilimency was an important life skill, he also realized there was likely only so much he could get away with, and if he was going to have to choose between throwing them into a group of Dark Wizards with the Legilimency skill or the Occlumency skill he was going to have to go with the more defensive set. Which honestly didn’t bother him too much as he knew the feeling of having Legilimency used on him without knowing Occlumency or having an Occlumency skill lower, weaker than the Legilimency user and the feeling of having his mind invaded like that, his private thoughts exposed to what felt like strangers at the time, was not a feeling he had enjoyed. At all. He didn’t think he would go so far as to say he wouldn’t wish it on his worst enemies because if the situation called for it, the situation called for it.

The Auror in him wanted to use Legilimency on the Advanced students so that they would be prepared for the feeling of having their souls, their brains, their most inner parts invaded, so that should this happen to them in the real world they would know what to expect. The teacher in him who needed to keep his job in order to keep an eye out for his brother, however, understood that if he were to force students to participate in a lesson like that it could end badly for him. Besides, he didn’t really think he wanted to know about the ins and outs of who liked who in the upper years of Sonora, details that he would have very much been interested in knowing back when he was a seventh year but couldn’t care less about now.

When the class started, Alfie sat on his desk as per usual, and gathered the small number of students around him. “Today we are going to be learning about two spells, one of which is very dangerous, probably more dangerous than some other spells you might have studied thus far and,” he emphasized this next part. “I believe it is up there with the three Unforgiveables. You, of course, know which ones I’m talking about I should hope. Now,” he reached behind his desk to pull out the basket of stones. “Take one and pass it around.”

Once each student had gotten a stone, Alfie twisted himself around the desk to go over to the chalkboard, he gestured for his students to follow him. “The first spell we will be talking about is Legilimens, can anyone tell me what it does? Yes,” he nodded to the first person who looked as though they had the answer. “Correct,” he said. “Legilimency is a type of magic which allows the performer of the spell to extract emotions and memories from another person's mind. Now while this may sound cool, it is actually a horrible thing.” He looked each student in their eye as he said this next part making sure they understood that Legilimency was not something to be taken lightly. “The feeling of having someone else in your head, taking your personal thoughts and feelings from you is not one that you should ever want to experience nor inflict on another person do I make myself clear?”

He swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he did so. “There is a way to block this, and that is called Occlumency. Occlumency is the art of being about to defend your mind from external probing or penetration.” He chose his words carefully in hopes that he might influence the students towards liking Occlumency and distrusting Legilimency. “Occlumency comes from the latin ‘occulto’ or ‘to hide, to conceal’. Legilimency comes from the latin ‘legens’ or ‘reader’.” He reached into his pocket to pull out the stone that he had kept for himself, holding it up for his class to see. “You see this stone? This is what your mind should be like when someone tries to penetrate it. Smooth, blank, clean. Impenetrable.

“We will be studying Occlumency over the next couple of days, and throughout the rest of the term because by the time I’m done with you you will all be able to perform at the very least the elementary Occlumency skills. Close your eyes,” he said. “Let’s begin. The basic skill set allows an Occlumens to keep a Legilimens from discovering the emotional ties to the particular memory the Legilimens is probing. Once we have mastered these skills we will attempt to continue on to advanced Occlumency and perhaps even attempt out hands at resisting the Imperius Curse as that requires you to tap into a similar part of your brain.

“Advanced Occlumency gives the user the ability to feed the Legilimens false emotions, feelings, and memories and can be a very important skill to have especially if you plan on becoming an Auror later in life, I certainly used this skill a few times in the field myself.” Though he had shared his previous profession with his students he had not given them the reason for his departure. “In today’s lesson I will not be practicing Legilimency on you, however be warned that should someone ever attempt to do so, they may first begin by verbal assault in order you let your guard down. As such, those who are able to compartmentalize generally do better with Occlumency because they don’t allow things to rile them up.

“Today though I want you to concentrate on concealing your feelings and lies. I have borrowed Professor Tallec’s class pet for the lesson, so what I want you to do today is partner up and each of you think of something particularly horrible that you’ve done. Kneazles are able to detect untrustworthiness and lying so this particular one should react if you are not concealing these feels properly. When you approach the Kneazle then you are to imagine your mind is like the stone. Your partner is there to cast a protection spell between you and the Kneazle in case the Kneazle decides to attack. It shouldn’t though.” Alfie felt perfectly comfortable in having his sixth and seventh years deal with a juvenile Kneazle as by now they should have had enough training to know what to do.

“For those who feel particularly brave or, perhaps, particularly careless, and feel that they have passed the Kneazle tests enough times I will perform Legilimency on you but only should you wish it. As I said last week, as your professor I am here to make sure you get as full an education as possible. However, I cannot ethically perform Legilimency on you unless I have express permission otherwise that could be a whole mess of legal processes. As such if you would like to participate in this part of the lesson—and by no means feel pressured to do so, I will need you to turn in the signed consent forms I passed out on the first day of class. If you are still a minor then you also need to have parental consent. I will make copies and allow each of you to have one while I will hold on to the original. That being said, you may begin.”

OOC: No one should go to the Hospital Wing because of a Kneazle attack as Pye would intervene should something like pose a true danger. Tag me in the subject line if your character has any questions, is having difficulties, causing trouble, or wants to be a guinea pig. If the latter, please indicate in an OOC note how far Pye can go.

Subthreads:

To be probed or not to be probed, that is the question. by Ava Fletcher, Aladren with Malcolm Carey, Pecari, Ava

I doubt I'll bother the Kneazle much. by Keme RunningBear, Aladren

10 Professor Pye Advanced DADA (Years VI & VII) 30 Professor Pye 1 5

Ava Fletcher, Aladren

June 13, 2015 12:18 AM

To be probed or not to be probed, that is the question. by Ava Fletcher, Aladren

After having got her CAT results back, Ava had been giddy to remember that this year she was allowed to drop two of her classes if she so wished in order to focus on three core classes that would be instrumental to her later on in life. On a particularly slow day, she had sat down at her desk, cleared all the art work off it, and pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and a pen to make a time table.

However, as she worked through the time tables she realized quite quickly that in order to be a healer she would need to take Charms, Transfiguration, Defense Against the Dark Arts and, of course, Potions. That only left Care of Magical Creatures which was a class that Ava greatly enjoyed, partly because Professor Tallec was so kind, but mostly because she missed her cat, Seal, a lot. Furthermore, according to the brochures she had procured, she also needed an Outstanding or an Exceeds Expectations of NEWTs or NEWTs level equivalent in Herbology which meant she would be required to take up an Independent Study in addition to the other classes she was taking. So it was that Ava returned to her sixth year with the same class load plus an independent study.

Luckily, she thought as she walked from Potions to Defense, Advanced students got an additional free period to the half hour one they’d gotten for the past five years. So far she hadn’t been struggling under the work load, but they were also only a week into the school year. She could almost envision cracking one night in the coming months as she stayed up late in the common room with her friends studying. She imagined that if she were to have a breakdown it would likely involve copious amounts of stress crying and messy painting. Which honestly didn’t sound too bad to her as she knew many artists fueled their craft with their emotions. However crying in front of people wasn’t something Ava liked so she thought it best that particular situation was avoided if possible.

As she got settled into Professor Pye’s class, putting her bag on a desk at the front of the classroom so that when he got the class started she wouldn’t have to walk as far, she marveled at just how many young professor they had that year. Though she had heard horror stories circulating in the rumor mill of the younger years, Ava hadn’t found Pye to be too terrible just yet. He was definitely strict, perhaps stricter than she would have liked but it was because of his no homework policy that she hadn’t really fallen behind just yet—studying nightly for his daily quizzes was something she would have done anyway since she had gotten in the habit of reviewing the day’s notes and chapters from each class after dinner every night. Besides, he was kind of cute, if one was into the whole rugged soldier kind of look, she supposed.

“Do you have your memory yet?” she asked the person to her right as Pye let them go. She knew exactly what horrible thing she was going to think about when it got to the Kneazle, though she was curious to see whether or not she would be able to conceal her mind from the Kneazle and also how exactly the Kneazle would react to the images that were flashing through her mind. While she waited for her partner to answer, her mind briefly wandered to the signed permission slip that was lying in her bag. She had sent it to Papa to get signed just in case she wanted to participate in the experiment, but she wasn’t quite sure if she did want to. She didn’t know how comfortable she felt with Professor Pye poking around in her head.

10 Ava Fletcher, Aladren To be probed or not to be probed, that is the question. 0 Ava Fletcher, Aladren 0 5

Keme RunningBear, Aladren

June 27, 2015 3:45 PM

I doubt I'll bother the Kneazle much. by Keme RunningBear, Aladren

Keme wasn’t too sure about the new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. He respected him as having been a previous Auror, but learning from him would be a different matter. It took a certain type of personality to be a great Professor. Keme wasn’t sure yet if Professor Pye had that. Of course, part of it was due to the rumors he had heard regarding his teaching skills with the younger years. Keme didn’t really have time to study every night for just this one class on top of all the readings and projects he had to do for his final year at Sonora.

Thankfully, that really hasn’t been an issue so far, but it had only been a week into the new year, so who knew how terrible it was going to get.

At the request of the professor, Keme grabbed one of the stones and placed it in front of him on the desk. He assumed their assignment would be some spell to use against the stone, but as he listened to the lecture, he realized that the stone really had nothing to do with anything other than a metaphor. He supposed some people needed it. It didn’t really matter though because the lecture in and of itself was actually quite good and Keme had found himself having difficulty keeping up with all the information that Professor Pye was throwing at them. He had read all the chapters that they had been assigned, so he knew most of it was probably in the book, but he liked to write everything down so that he can go back through and mark the most important points of the lessons.

Of course, at the end of the lectures was an actual assignment. Keme wasn’t really sure what to do with the Kneazle or the assignment. In order to be able to make a Kneazle suspicious of you, you had to be the sort of person who did something terrible or thought terrible things. Keme just wasn’t that person. His parents raised him to be respectful and to do the right thing. His grandfather instilled that in all of them as well. Sure, he had a couple of cousins who rebelled against their families, but that was youthful rebellion and nothing really serious.

The most that he could come up with that a Kneazle might not be too fond of was the fact that he was a hunter. There were plenty of people in the world who were, for sport or for livelihood, so he wasn’t sure if the Kneazle would actually think anything remotely negative about him, but it was all that he had. Hunting, tracking, fishing, etc., these were all things that were taught to the men of the tribe as a symbolic way to remember their ancestry. They used their catches every day and never wasted anything the way some who hunted for sport did.

Either way, he didn’t think that the Kneazle would really find anything remotely interesting about him and this would all just be a waste of both of their times. The professor did offer to do the spell to them if they felt comfortable enough, so perhaps Keme should consider that option for later.

Keme sighed. He pulled his shoulder length hair into a loose bun at the nape of his neck. His sister called this the male artsy bun whenever he did it (which was more often than he realized), but Keme just thought that during lessons, this was more practical than allowing his hair everywhere. Determined to try to block the Kneazle from sensing something that wasn’t there, Keme looked around for a partner. Maybe whoever he worked with would have a more immoral conscious than Keme’s own.

6 Keme RunningBear, Aladren I doubt I'll bother the Kneazle much. 0 Keme RunningBear, Aladren 0 5

Malcolm Carey, Pecari

July 06, 2015 12:30 AM

My answer is "absolutely not" by Malcolm Carey, Pecari

Malcolm did not want to be in the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom, but he had known from the minute he got his CATS results that he had no real choice in the matter. The dark arts were a family hobby, and while most of the really serious hobbyists were dead now, killed off or sent out of the country to clear the way for the family’s current public relations campaign, he knew that at least every male in the family knew some and wouldn’t be at all surprised if Morgaine was far from being the only girl in the family who was at least as dangerous as her brother. If Mal and his siblings didn’t all learn to defend themselves, he was sure someone would be more than happy to try to remove the obstacles they presented to South Carolina and Virginia duking it out over who got to claim all their resources. Lucille had gotten private tutoring in how to do it to preserve her image as a completely sweet, completely useless little pureblood girl, but Mal knew he needed to try to look really good at it. The time for doing what came naturally, which was blending in as far as possible, was past.

Unfortunately, his mother had kept him so coddled that he really didn’t know much beyond what he had learned in classes over the years, which he knew was next to useless. If it was safe enough to use in Intermediate classes, it probably wasn’t something his cousins would even bother with. Because of that, he felt himself go even paler than usual when Pye announced they were going to be studying something the professor ranked with the Unforgivables and clenched his hands into fists so hard that his nails dug into his palms when Pye clarified that statement.

Mal knew about mental magic. He knew a lot more than he wanted to know about mental magic. His father had died because the Georgia branch had a knack for it. Maybe Legilimency, or at least a lack of Occlumency, hadn’t killed his father – it had, he’d always been told…something related to an Imperius Curse somehow re-routed through memory magic, something which Morgaine’s father seemed to have invented himself and used Dad as his first, ultimately flawed test subject for – but it was close enough for him to nod, fully agreeing with Pye’s assessment of the spells. If anyone ever rummaged through his head, he would definitely want them punished even if they only did it for fun, not to make him die horribly in public.

No emotions. He could do that. Maybe. Thinking about his father’s death had just put him on edge, and there were other things – the seething rage he sometimes felt toward his mother in general and usually experienced when he thought of the Brockerts taking his sister away and the rest of the family letting them and Lucille herself going along with it all without so much as a peep, the less angry but just as inappropriate thoughts he sometimes had about girls at school, sometimes resentment of Anthony, though he thought that one would be harder to drag out than the others. It wasn’t as bad as the others. Could he think about that instead of anything that actually mattered when he was put on the spot? The professor said it was advanced Occlumency to lie right, but Mal did think he was a good liar. It was his birthright as a Carey and a necessary survival skill with his mother….

He was just about to get really nervous when Pye gave the assignment and he relaxed again. Unless Pye broke the rules, he’d have no way of knowing what Mal was thinking about, leaving him free to cheat. He actually smiled when the girl next to him – Fletcher; easy to remember when she was the only girl in the class this year – asked if he had a memory yet.

“I believe I do,” he said. “It was hard to pick just one horrible thing on such short notice, but I think I’ve got it narrowed down. Still – ladies first,” he said, bowing a little to her, getting a little carried away in his relief over not really having to do anything with his memories of his sister’s wedding or the day his father died or anything like that. “If you’re ready, of course,” he chattered on. “I’m good at repulsion and shield charms, so there’s no need to worry about that.”

0 Malcolm Carey, Pecari My answer is "absolutely not" 0 Malcolm Carey, Pecari 0 5

Ava

July 16, 2015 11:28 PM

My answer is still up in the air. by Ava

Malcolm Carey was someone Ava had never actually interacted with before. She had heard stories about the Carey family—what student at Sonora hadn’t? But Ava wasn’t really one to pay too much attention to rumors and even if she ever did pay attention to rumors it was only to acknowledge that they existed and were probably false. Being subjugated to quite a few when she was younger had kept her from ever believing things that she heard circulating the gossip rag was ever true. Additionally, Chloe had only ever had polite interactions with the seventh year Pecari and who was Ava to question her friend’s judgment? Nevertheless she was still kind of caught off guard with Malcom’s polite attitude even if she hadn’t thought he was the sort to be rude. Whether this was because she was projecting stereotypical pureblood prejudices or some rumor she had heard onto him she wasn’t sure, but as quickly as the thought entered her head she stomped it out, feeling quite guilty for even thinking such a mean thing about a person who had never done her any malice and who treated her closest girl friend so well.

Yet, Malcom’s admittance of having a hard time picking just one bad thing he’d done caught Ava off guard. However, memories of his good works towards Chloe soothed her and she smiled, believing it was his way of making a joke. “I know what you mean,” she replied kind of off handedly. Though she had not done that many bad things—or at least things the Kneazle would dislike, she still wanted in on the joke. “However, I was able to decide once I re-evaluated the degree to which my things were bad. I mean, I didn’t want to chose a particularly nasty memory, I don’t want to die by Kneazle attack.” She was quite obviously exaggerating, Ava thought. Professor Tallec’s Kneazle was still fairly young and definitely would be no match for two Advanced student’s shield charms.

“The same goes for you,” she said. “I’ve got a pretty good handle on shield charms myself—those are some I really will have to know if I’m to become a Healer. You never know what a disease can make someone do, that’s what I learned when I helped my mom out last summer.” It was true, too. There were some pretty awful things that had been done to people, and some pretty awful diseases people could catch. “The amount of memory modification charms that resulted in a person being too violent when a certain sound was made was just too numerous to be healthy for anyone!” She sighed at the recollection of the previous summer, a small cloud overshadowing her previously cheerful mood. Talking about her mom just reminded her of the past two summers and the complete 180 that had taken place.

She stepped forward to the Kneazle as it came her and Malcom’s turn and looked towards him to make sure he was ready. She closed her eyes, thinking of the Sound on a calm day when there wasn’t too much wave action. She meditated on this image trying to close off her mind to all the horrible things she had done and then opened her eyes, staring straight into the eyes of the little Kneazle. Her heart melted a little as she realized just how desperately she wanted one for her own—Seal was getting up there in years and Ava had always been a cat person. In fact, that was the only reason she had continued to take Care of Magical Creatures that year.

The utter, true cuteness of the Kneazle caught her slightly off guard and she could feel her resolve waning, the calm, smooth water beginning to ripple and the Kneazle let out a tiny hiss. Images of porridge, screams, and a sickening crunch were breaking through and Ava stumbled slightly before remembering to clear her mind again. As the ripples in the water melted out again, the Kneazle also began to calm and satisfied she had fixed her issue, Ava stepped away and looked at Malcolm. “Your turn,” she said. “My wand is at the ready.”

10 Ava My answer is still up in the air. 0 Ava 0 5