Stressed to the point of Nausea on Defense Against the Dark Arts

Professor Pye

February 15, 2016 8:37 AM

Intermediate Defense (Years III, IV, & V) by Professor Pye

Alfie loved and respected his colleagues. Well, he wasn’t sure if he’d go so far as to say that, but he did (at the very least) care very much about their well-being and so he had taken the liberty of establishing a weekly “night out” because who didn’t like to party? In his humble opinion, all the members of the staff needed a good, stiff drink after dealing with the adolescents all week long and so he had determined Friday evenings as the time for this. Which meant he needed to start planing for tomorrow night and quick! Nevertheless, as his wristwatch ticked to eight o’ clock, it was time for him to put aside his plans for the weekend and start the class.

The previous week some of his advanced students had come to class as each other, due to the new Potions professor's class project. This had given him the brilliant idea of using the leftover potion to create his own lesson for the intermediates. Not all his intermediate students would be continuing on to the advanced potions level but he wanted to be sure that all the students graduated Sonora with at least a working idea of how polyjuice worked. It was impossible to know when they would next encounter polyjuice potion and as such he wanted to give them some basic instruction in identifying the real from the fake.

"Okay, everyone take off any jewelry, house insignia, or indicative markers of who you are and put them in your bags, please," Alfie said once all the students had arrived.

The class before he instructed everyone to come wearing their robes and had divided each level into two halves. Each half had to create a secret question and answer that they had to submit to him. Then he had created two separate lists for each half--students who would give a hair, and students who would drink the potion so that there would be two of each person in the class. He himself had the master list so that by the end of hour (in case there were lasting effects) he could sort out to the next professor who was who.

The point of this lesson, he told the class, was to use previous knowledge in order to identify who was the false copy.
"As a bonus twist for the fifth years," he added with a smile. "I have given some of the false copies the secret question. So you'll have to offer more than just that interaction as proof of finding out who is who. In a real wartime situation your faction could have a mole and as such, you'll have to know your partners well!"

He clapped his hands together with a smile and nodded. "Great, let's start then. If you are not going to be taking the potion today please bring put your hair in one of the vials, label it with your name, and then go wait in the hall until I call you back in. Everyone else please form an orderly line." Alfie had already decided who would receive whose hair and had a list which he then used to call forth the other students once the room was empty of the true copies.

"I'll put out the lights and on three you are to drink the potion. When the lights come back on I'll resize your robes if need be and then once everyone is sorted we can call everyone else back in."

Once everyone was satisfied with their appearances, Alfie let the rest of the class back into the room and opened his arms. "Right, I want you to all form your groups from last class. False copies, your job is to convince everyone you're the real thing while true copies your goal is to create your full team without any false copies in it. Have fun!"

OOC: Regular posting rules apply though we'll hold this class in a Quidditch Pitch/Challenge style of thread since anyone can talk to anyone else. Below you will find the "master" list so that you know who should be who :)

Names on the left = gave the hair, names on the right = person who received the hair. (Note: I used the active list that the Donovan's author so graciously provided for the yearbook surveys, so thank you Yearbook Staff for that!! :) ) The students on the left hand side are a team and must group up together.

Third years:
Owen -> Kelsey
Gia -> Andrew
Charles -> Jax
Ginger -> Alistair
Caelia -> Sammy
Lauren -> Barnaby
Jemima -> John S.

Fourth years:
Araceli -> Aiden
Diana -> Tobi
Scarlett/Savannah* -> Makenzie
Liac -> John U.
Uzume -> Joella
*Because there was an odd number, Alfie would have let one of the twins decide who to give the hair and then there would be three students who look alike and the Fourth years have to decide which are the two real twins and which of the "triplets" is the imposter.

Fifth years:
Chaslyn -> Olivier
Oliver -> Ji-Won
Jacob -> Lionel
Lena -> Clark

Subthreads:

I am absolutely not a spy. Trust me on this. by John Umland, Aladren, I think.... with Clark Dill, definitely Aladren

I am me as you are me and we are all together by The Real Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw with Alistair Johnson, Crotalus

Just call me Caelia! by Sammy Meeks [Pecari] with Jamie Park, Pecari

Nothing to see here... keep on walking. by Jax Donovan, Aladren

Stressed to the point of Nausea by Lena Westley, Aladren

Hmm... by Kelsey Atwater,Crotalus with Barnaby Pye, "Jemima Wolseithcrafte", John Spencer, Aladren, The Real Jemima, Teppenpaw

The third twin by Makenzie Newell [Crotalus] with Aiden O'Neil, Teppenpaw

It's real for me (desperately seeking Kenzie) by Araceli Arbon, Crotalus with Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw

OOC - please read! by DH Skies

10 Professor Pye Intermediate Defense (Years III, IV, & V) 30 Professor Pye 1 5

John Umland, Aladren, I think....

February 15, 2016 9:31 PM

I am absolutely not a spy. Trust me on this. by John Umland, Aladren, I think....

John had not known what Pye was planning when he’d asked them for secret questions and answers, but he had been suspicious at once. Not so suspicious that he had written anything truly personal down – he thought it would take a really special sort to read anything too nefarious into the author of his favorite childhood mythology book - but suspicious nevertheless. His first thought had been that they were going to be Confunded and that the lesson was some kind of test to see who had the mental fortitude to know if they had really exchanged security answers or not.

He wasn’t sorry he had spent time reading up on how that charm worked and how to detect and try to resist its effects when he heard what they were actually doing, but he was disappointed that he’d guessed wrong. Their minds, it turned out, were safe as houses – probably. It was their faces they were set to lose for the day.

This had the potential to be interesting.

On the day they’d met, Clark had accurately identified John as a half-blood (cultural half-blood, anyway; he neither had nor wanted genetic percentages) based on how he’d handled a broom, but he had also advised John that shoes were often another accurate indicator of status. John looked down and started trying to memorize every pair he could see, a behavior he continued to engage in even as hair donors walked out the door. Everyone would adjust their garments for size, but with luck, some of them would forget to recolor or otherwise majorly alter their shoes, which could allow him an advantage somewhere in the game. Robes would mostly hide them, but they would be visible when anyone walked, which was why as soon as the door closed, he changed the color of his from brown to black. Just one more thing to throw off anyone who did pay as much attention as he had.

He was neither the first nor the last called up to drink the potion, so by the time he took the flask gingerly between two fingers, he had already wondered how this was divided up by blood. He couldn’t figure out which would horrify some of his classmates more, the idea of drinking something in any way connected with someone like him or the thought of someone like him frolicking around in one of their bodies. The social upsets he could cause if he really wanted to, at least for a few minutes….

That, however, would be Wrong. When the lights went off, he drank the potion down quickly, his mouth twisting as he swallowed and got the taste and texture of boiled cabbage in his mouth. For a few seconds, nothing worse than that happened, but then he grabbed the edge of his desk for support as his stomach reacted far, far worse to the potion than it ever had to even the worst-prepared leafy greens of somewhat dubious origins. The live snakes which had suddenly taken up residence in his stomach and started fighting for access to his esophagus weren’t the last or worst of it, though. His skin felt like it was melting into jelly, bones shifted, he could feel his fingers pulling back into his hands, for a moment he was sure he was going to suffocate and die as his teeth all seemed to undergo small changes in shape or size or both at the same time and a few seemed to move around in his mouth –

Then it was over. Swallowing hard, determined not to throw up or do anything dramatic, he straightened his back, though he kept one hand on a firm surface until he was sure of his balance.

“That,” said John hoarsely, to no one in particular, “was not fun.”

The voice jangled strangely in his ears. It wasn’t his. Backing away very carefully – these legs weren’t his, and his shoes and robes no longer fit properly – John blinked a few times, then squeezed his –

No, not his. He blinked a few times and then squeezed the eyes of the body he seemed to control at the moment shut. They were not his eyes. Their line of sight was different, the weight of the eyelids was different - it was all wrong. So were the hands – he could no longer feel the bones shifting around and growing together, but they felt clumsy and strange and though he was sure they were resting where they usually did by his sides, he could feel them resting in different positions at the same time. Raising them, he felt the face he was stuck behind gingerly, strange fingers going through air where the tips of his nose and chin should have been but meeting jawline too soon from the side.

Grimacing, he stretched the arms out and flexed the fingers a few times before he picked up his wand again in them. It was not quite as bad as wielding his wand as a smallish first year had been, but it wasn’t as easy as handling it usually was now, either. He muttered the charms to adjust his robes and shoes, but could tell he hadn’t fixed the robes quite as well around the shoulders as he had at the hems and thanked God above that the body he was stuck stumbling around in for the next hour was at least male and did not, therefore, present him with underwear problems of such magnitudes that he doubted he could have solved them in less time than it would have taken that idiot Park to notice and comment upon them. Interacting with a female brain, an object which he’d gathered would likely have a very different hormonal balance than his normal one – if, of course, the body transformation was total and the thing that did the thinking was purely the non-physical components of the Mind, a supernatural-ish...thing that pushed the levers that controlled the voluntary portions of the available bundle of nerves and vessels and chemicals and electricity; what he’d read about Dementors suggested that might be true, but he was instinctively distrustful of purely magical authorities – would have been quite interesting, but it really seemed like a thing he would rather do without Park around. Park was, after all, no gentleman. Making another face, he pulled a folded-up quiz out of his pocket and tapped it with his wand.

“Reclamo,” he said, speaking normally again in the hopes of getting used to the weirdness of the wrong voice hitting his ears. He thought wincing at the sound of what was supposed to be his own voice would be kind of a dead giveaway that he wasn’t who he looked like. The blank back of his parchment flashed silver, then returned to its original color. Hesitantly, he lifted it and looked at his temporary reflection.

The material gave the image a yellowish-brown tint he doubted the face he wore actually had, but the lighter-haired, brighter-eyed reflection was that of Liac Reinhardt. A man whose - relative (rattled, he could not really remember if Liac and Tobias were brothers or cousins; their appearance suggested the latter, but John’s dark hair and general resemblance to a purposeful, often irritable wading bird meant he bore almost no resemblance to his brother Joe, one of the two siblings he shared blood with) was in the Potion group.

John thought about that for a moment, then scowled in Pye’s direction as he shoved the mirrored quiz back into his pocket. If he had let the Potion group see who all the others had just turned into, he and Tobias could have worked out a Doomed Spy ploy, decided which of them had the better chance of infiltration and should therefore figure out a way to sell the other out to the others as a Copy, thereby probably gaining the Originals’ trust and possibly achieving their group’s objective by preventing the real whoever from being accepted – since most of the moles would likely try to keep their heads down and say as little as possible to avoid making a mistake, someone who didn’t might have a chance of bluffing it out. An individual would have had to sacrifice the goal of maintaining his cover among the Originals to allow the other fellow to do so, but since it would have completed the objective, John was sure Pye could have been persuaded to give the doomed spy class points, not to mention convinced to throw some House points John’s way for thinking up the plan and prioritizing the objective…Assuming, of course, that Pye was also thinking in terms of two teams instead of thinking of one team under assault from operatives of many independent factions. Even if they all were representatives of different factions opposed to the Originals, though, two factions could have forged at least a temporary alliance and an information-sharing deal until the Originals were undermined -

John shrugged, acknowledging that the real problems were that he didn’t like having information and not being able to use it and that he was even less crazy about the idea of knowing that someone else almost certainly knew that he was lying without knowing who that someone was or what that someone was doing with the information. He decided to think about something else. Luckily, the other aspect of his predicament – the fact that he was currently manipulating a copy of Liac Reinhardt’s body; he could move it more smoothly now, but still didn’t think of it as his own – gave him plenty of other topics to think about. He looked for Clark’s shoes, wanting to at least know where his friend was so he could be on his guard if they ended up in the same area even as he regretted that he couldn't pull Clark aside at once and start experimenting to see if and how the new bodies affected their magical abilities. He knew the results would be a little off because handling their wands with new fingers and arms was obviously going to throw off their usual casting styles, but he thought it still would have been at least as interesting an exercise as the assigned one.

As the others came back into the room, he put his wand away – anyone who knew Liac well would almost certainly realize that the wand in Liac’s hand didn’t belong to Liac, giving him away at once – and tried to focus on the task at hand. He and Clark could compare notes later. Right now, he needed to remember everything he could about Liac Reinhardt. Unfortunately, Tobias was the only member of that family he had ever really conversed with at any length. All he really knew about Liac was how the other guy played Quidditch. They didn’t have many dealings outside of that arena.

He thought hard. Liac’s posture was more…relaxed than his own, he thought, at least in class. He looked for the real thing, searching for any tells like an unbuttoned collar or particularly messy bit of hair that he could quickly try to copy. Liac also spent a lot of time around Tobias, but Tobias had been in the Potion group, so he wasn’t in evidence. If he saw someone he thought was Tobias, though, or if he faked it…was running a Doomed Spy when he couldn’t be the doomed one really a good idea here? Would the real Liac sell Tobias out, or would it be more realistic to try to help an obvious fake? That would seriously annoy the Originals, but it might help him pass for the Teppenpaw more thoroughly….

He tried to think like a Teppenpaw, but while he thought he had at least some of the Teppenpaw traits, they were secondary for him, as secondary as Aladren ones were for his sister. He could exercise any of them, but he had to intentionally set out to do so and this was a scenario he had never considered before. He didn’t think it would bother him at all to use Joe that way in a game like this, but Joe was Aladrenish enough himself that he would expect nothing less when it was only a game and would stab John in the back first if John hesitated. Tobias was smart, but even he had never really struck John as someone who was dangerously close to being a member of John’s own tribe. The analogy just didn’t work. He still didn’t know what the real Liac would do in his shoes. He could only hope the guy hadn’t thought to set up secondary trust passwords, completely divorced from anything they’d done last class, with all the other Originals while the Potion group was busy transforming and getting its robes adjusted. That was what John would have done, or at least done with the people he could get to speak to him, but Liac wasn’t John any more than John was Liac.

When everyone was thoroughly mixed up, he picked a face and walked toward it, reminding himself to loosen his shoulders – the Baron went on at length about the importance of disguising one’s walk so it wasn’t obvious from the back – and to smile. He thought Liac was one of those people who smiled a lot, presumably because they were good-looking, probably rich, and lived entirely in the moment. John shared none of those traits, but adults had often said he had a lot of imagination. He just had to use it.

“Hi,” he said, still smiling, hands in his pockets, trying to look the picture of confidence. This was, he noticed, much easier when he was as good as anonymous. As happy as he generally was being himself, he had to admit that there was a thrill that came with speaking to someone he was reasonably sure didn't know who he was. His appearance didn't make him another person, but it did mean people probably wouldn't react to him the way they normally would. He had a different face, a different House, a whole different set of associations. “If I believe you’re real, will you believe I am?”

If that wasn't an un-John-Umlandish statement, John didn't know what was - metaphorically speaking, of course, but he thought his real identity was secure whether this person believed he was Liac Reinhardt or not. John Umland asked a lot of questions, but that was not one of them. His belief in something was no reason, on its own, for someone else to believe anything, and he would have normally been the first to point that out. At the moment, though, he was trying to be a Teppenpaw, and even the best - the very, very best - of them sometimes made irrational statements just to be social and charming and other things John didn't usually consider very important.

OOC: Observations of Liac gleaned from the yearbook pictures and reading over class and Quidditch posts, apologies for any inaccuracies or misinterpretations.

16 John Umland, Aladren, I think.... I am absolutely not a spy. Trust me on this. 285 John Umland, Aladren, I think.... 0 5

Clark Dill, definitely Aladren

February 17, 2016 12:38 PM

I am Lena Westley and I am a girl. Absolutely. by Clark Dill, definitely Aladren

Clark was interested to see what use their 'secret questions' would be put to this class. He felt he had been particularly clever by asking "What is my laptop's screen resolution in kilopixels?" because not only would anybody trying to guess the answer need to know what a screen resolution was and some standard sizes, but they would also need to know how to convert megapixels to kilopixels, which anyone with a basic understanding of the metric system could do, but that predicated a knowledge that screen resolutions were usually measured in megapixels, which might trip up some non-techie muggle-borns and totally baffle any purebloods. So he was feeling pretty good going into class, sure that his question was unguessable even though his laptop had a fairly common resolution. After running the science club for a year and a half, he felt pretty sure the number of computer hardware geeks in the school was pretty limited.

When half the class filed out of the room into the hall to await the creation of their polyjuice duplicates, he wondered if he had picked a question that worked too well and that was why he was going to be one of the people drinking the potion.

He had already removed his badges for his House and his positions of Assistant Captain and Prefect, as well as some of his less obvious identifying features like his wristwatch and tennis shoes. Once he knew who he'd be impersonating, he would have a better idea of what kind of transformation his footwear needed.

When the lights went out he hesitated a moment (that was a minor disadvantage to knowing what kinds of things went into brewing Polyjuice Potion and how it affected the body) them made a face and drank it down.

Honestly, it tasted better than he'd expected it to. Not something he wanted to drink regularly, of course, but it wasn't awful and had an almost pleasant aftertaste. If the library had a taste, he felt it would taste kind of like that.

He had maybe a second to reflect on that before he started shrinking. He was a fifth year, and probably the tallest in his class, so that wasn't a great surprise, but it was not a fun sensation and it seemed to go on forever. His face also hurt, but not as much as his bones, and his hair was growing out. He could see it had turned darker when it fell in front of his eyes as he hunched forward in a vain attempt to reduce to shrinkage pain by folding in on himself.

Someone was groaning quite miserably and he sympathized completely until he realized he was the one doing it and made himself stop. In addition to being embarrassing, it didn't sound right and it was freaking him out a little bit.

Then it was over and done and he was no longer Clark Dill in body. He was ... he looked down at his hands. They were smaller, finer than his hands. A terrible suspicion gripped him then, and one of those small fine hands moved to his chest and, yes. They were ... a girl's hands. And his chest was a girl's chest, too.

Crap.

This was going to be harder than anticipated.

He took his hand off his (her?) chest because that was terribly rude, particularly in public, and he was sure he didn't have permission to touch there. He prayed fervently that he would not need to use the toilet before the potion wore off in an hour because that would be nothing but awkward and he really honestly did not need to confirm he was missing a key piece of his anatomy.

He was already missing nearly a foot in height and his robe hung down off him like a kid wearing his Dad's clothes (or, more accurately to his present circumstances, Clark's five foot tall Dad wearing Clark's clothes). The bottom hem pooled on the floor, ready to trip him if he tried moving yet, and his fingertips were entirely enclosed within his sleeves. The room, too, looked very strange from this lower perspective. It wasn't quite the same as when he was sitting, but he had gotten used to seeing the tops of people's heads and those were no longer visible to him, not even the third years'. Ginger Pierce, the tiny Teppenpaw Keeper, for example, no longer looked nearly as bitty as he was used to seeing her.

With some help from Professor Pye, he got his robe sized back to a point where it no longer inhibited his spellcasting. At that point he found a reflective surface and discovered he was now sharing s face with Lena Westley. It could certainly be worse, he supposed. He still heard an internal drumroll of dread as he transfigured his sneakers into a more feminine and dressy pair of shoes like the ones Lena usually wore to class. At least she wasn't the sort who wore six inch heels, he reassured himself.

He tested his voice a few times, getting used to the higher register, but he didn't think he really sounded much like Lena. This was probably what Lena thought her voice sounded like though. That was a odd thing to consider.

"Hi, I am Lena Westley and my brother is Olivier. Hi, my name is Lena Westley. Have you seen my brother, Olivier?" He wasn't addressing anybody in particular, just trying to remember how Lena talked. He wasn't sure he was doing it right. He belatedly realized he often monopolized the conversation when he was with her. Okay, plan A, don't talk much.

This class was looking more and more impossible.

The answer to Lena's secret question would prove at least marginally helpful as a counterbalance to everything else counting against him. And he liked to think Lena was a friend, so he though he could maybe answer some other questions to 'prove' his new identity, as long as he didn't run up against Olivier himself. But Olivier had taken a potion, too, so he would presumably be too busy trying to pretend to be someone else than out Clark as not being his sister.

Soon enough, the door opened to allow the real people to return. Clark inserted himself among them, trying to walk more like a girl than a formerly six foot tall guy but mostly just taking smaller steps, and tried to mix himself in so nobody could tell if he was already in the room or if he had just come in from the hall before he tried to insert himself into Lena's place.

Once he felt he had been sufficiently mixed in, he looked around and had to stop himself from approaching somebody. Lena was not as outgoing as he was himself, so she might not do that.

Then Liac approached him and made the offer to mutually believe in each others' realness. Clark hugged himself because this was a thing shy people did sometimes (though he couldn't recall off hand if it was a mannerism Lena engaged in, but it definitely wasn't one that would make people think 'Clark' at any rate) and replied softly (her voice usually sounded softer than he'd been hearing it in his own ears, but he wasn't sure if that was just an effect of skull resonance or if she actually talked softer, but he decided to try softer voice and see how that went over), "That sounds fair, but not very accurate." Lena was an Aladren. Surely should call anybody on such a fallacy, wouldn't she?

He looked around doubtfully, searching the crowd for the other Lena, "So, assuming we are both real, should we confront our impostors directly or just find the rest of our group and put the onus on them to prove themselves?"

1 Clark Dill, definitely Aladren I am Lena Westley and I am a girl. Absolutely. 277 Clark Dill, definitely Aladren 0 5

The Real Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw

February 17, 2016 2:14 PM

I am me as you are me and we are all together by The Real Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw

Ginger kind of liked DADA. Sure, the Professor was strict and something of a perfectionist, but there was no homework, and Ginger increasingly appreciated that now that her other classes were giving out intermediate level homework loads. Also, the professor was clearly making an effort to be liked, if his involvement in the concert and the challenges was any indicator, so she was giving him points for that. It wasn't his fault he came off as kinda scary.

Also, she was more aware now that he was pleasant to look at if nothing else. Not as wonderful as Jake was, but staring at Jake and passing her classes were not exactly compatible. At least if she was looking at Professor Pye, she was also usually listening to what he was saying, even if what was saying was often the opposite of pleasant. That could be at least part of why Jake was nicer to look at overall. Jake generally didn't talk about the terrible things dark people and dark creatures did to those unable to defend themselves.

As much as she would like to insist bad things like that wouldn't ever happen to her or those she cared about, nobody could guarantee that and the number of people she cared about was mighty large, so she paid attention so if anything attempted it, she would be able to stop it if she was there to help. She didn't fancy being a helpless girl who could only scream uselessly if she and hers were attacked by something.

Today, she guessed, based on last class, that they would be doing something to defend against mind attacks to get secret information. It was a bit late, she thought, what with the Satori already removed from school grounds, but she supposed they had said it might be allowed back once it couldn't repeat the havoc it created last term. Perhaps this was part of that.

It wasn't.

She headed out into the hall with the other 'Real People' for todays lesson. "I never met my dad," she reminded those who might need to know that to identify her. "I don't even know his name."

They were allowed back in and Ginger entered, standing up on her toes to try to spot the other her. Finding her double, she headed right to the strangely similar girl. It wasn't at all like looking in a mirror. Her part looked weird on that side and the other girl wasn't moving in perfect opposite sync to her. It was kind of amazing, actually.

"Cool," she said, "I always wondered what it would be like to have a twin." Unable to help herself, she shifted side to side to see if her double would try to mirror it.

Grinning widely, she continued, "So I know I'm the real one, but shall we go see who else can tell? Where shall we start? Someone who doesn't know me too well to give you a fighting shot? Or are you up to the challenge of talking with Jemima?" Then, realizing Jemima had a double, too, she added, "If we can figure out which is the real one, that is."

1 The Real Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw I am me as you are me and we are all together 302 The Real Ginger Pierce, Teppenpaw 0 5

Sammy Meeks [Pecari]

February 17, 2016 3:08 PM

Just call me Caelia! by Sammy Meeks [Pecari]

Sammy knew for a fact that she was not very pretty. Interesting in a unique and maybe even positive way, sure, but she did not meet conventional beauty standards. She was a touch too short and on the pudgier side of things, holding onto a little too much baby fat even at fourteen. Her eyebrows were perhaps her most defining feature, and they were too thick. She had some pretty blue eyes, she could give herself that, but her nose didn’t really fight right on her face, and her mouth was too small. She had always known that she wasn’t very pretty, but that was fine with her, really, because being pretty wasn’t her top priority.

But today, she was pretty. The reflection staring back at her in the small mirror she had pulled from her bag--she had taken to carrying one, more for her friends in case they needed it than for herself--was a pretty, petite thing with blonde curls and a cute little nose. Somehow, even the hands holding the mirror were more attractive: small and uncalloused, seeming to have never known hard physical work. When Sammy (or not?) put the mirror or way, she rubbed not-her hands together and felt how very soft they were.

Caelia Lucan was a babydoll of a human being.

Her robes were readjusted and freed of her identifiers, and Sammy (ish) waved Caelia’s hand in a sad goodbye to her Pecari insignia. It felt strange to be so completely and utterly Not Sammy, standing beautiful and blonde and naked (figuratively!!!). At least no one else was Sammy. That might have been worse, to stare at her own face on another person, not knowing quite who it was who pretended to be her.

The room was quite dark, but as Professor Pye left the real deals back in, Sammy(?) snuck stealthily through the room, getting closer to the group that entered so that she could more easily pretend to be one of them. When the lights came up, she addressed the person beside her whom she assumed to be a real, unaffected person based on their placement, unless someone else had swooped around the room in a similar manner under guise of darkness. “Helloooo,” she said, Caelia’s voice tingly strangely on her tongue. She wasn’t quite sure how Caelia talked, but she was one of those Pureblood whatevers, so Sammy/Caelia did her best to sound posh, accidentally overcompensating. “Since I am most assured that we are we, how would you like to proceed?”

12 Sammy Meeks [Pecari] Just call me Caelia! 310 Sammy Meeks [Pecari] 0 5

Alistair Johnson, Crotalus

February 17, 2016 5:32 PM

Definitely the worst lesson ever. by Alistair Johnson, Crotalus

Alistair was not at all keen on the idea of anyone turning into him, or vice versa, so he did not meet today’s task with a smile, not that he ever met anything besides pretty girls with a smile anyway.

If the initial reaction to the polyjuice potion was not uncomfortable enough, nothing could prepare Alistair for the discovery that he had in fact transformed into one of those pretty girls. It felt weird. It felt wrong even, so so wrong. It didn’t take him long to figure out whose body it was that he felt so trapped inside. A quick glance down at a section of hair that had fallen over his shoulder told him exactly what he wished he didn’t have to know. Reaching a petite hand up to his face, he felt about the features in the hope that he’d got the hair clue all wrong… but he couldn’t be wrong about her hair; he’d certainly noted it often enough. Slowly and reluctantly, Alistair turned and looked into a nearby reflective glass panel and stared in horror at the proof that his assumptions were correct. He was Ginger Pierce and he was mortified.

Ali ran his fingers, small and strange as they were to use, through the ends of Ginger’s fine brown hair, an action he’d never had the luxury of doing but one that he bet that Jake Manger boy had. He felt slightly bitter at this but the thought didn’t last long. He was far too concerned with how inappropriate the whole situation was and how humiliating too. Alistair suddenly felt contempt towards Professor Pye for doing such a cruel thing to him. Surely there were enough boys for him to be paired with one? Pye was a sick man.

The fake Ginger Pierce adjusted his robes and then the lights went out and the ‘real’ students re-entered the room. Alistair realised that perhaps he should mingle amongst them but he found it quite awkward to manoeuvre his unfamiliar limbs without feeling parts of her body that he knew he shouldn’t. But it was Ginger’s skin on Ginger’s skin so it probably shouldn’t have felt as harmful as it did, but Ali was a gentleman and he couldn’t understand how this was a remotely respectable activity. His only consolation was that no one actually knew who it was controlling Ginger’s body and therefore could not remind him of the experience afterwards.

What he had not anticipated was that it would be the real Ginger herself who first approached him when the lights came back on and he didn’t know whether this was actually a good thing or a really bad place to start. She didn’t seem at all disturbed to see someone else in her body, apparently rather more excited by it than anything. Alistair knew that if it was him, he would have been very unhappy, although certainly not as unhappy as he currently was.

“Of course you’re not the real one because that’s me,” Alistair responded in Ginger’s voice, the sentence coming out oddly and making him wish he’d tested it beforehand. He thought he should probably maintain the lie even to Ginger’s face since anyone might overhear. He hurriedly added a bright smile because he was Ginger and she always smiled. “But I’ll work with you anyway; it will be fun!” Ali could not be more fake. He was hating every minute of the lesson so far and he highly doubted that would change even as he became more accustomed to moving someone else’s body and using their voice. He definitely didn’t want to talk to Jemima - if they found the real one, she’d be able to see through him in an instant. “Perhaps we should figure out that person instead?” he suggested, pointing to a random classmate in the hopes that he’d have better luck convincing them. He wasn’t sure if it was a good idea working with Ginger since she seemed more keen to have fun with the situation rather than get on with the task. Not only that but she made him feel more embarrassed than he already did and he wondered if she’d be so cheerful if she knew it was Alistair Johnson walking about inside her body. Ali forced another happy smile and hoped his face wouldn’t start aching too soon.

8 Alistair Johnson, Crotalus Definitely the worst lesson ever. 306 Alistair Johnson, Crotalus 0 5

Jax Donovan, Aladren

February 17, 2016 8:50 PM

Nothing to see here... keep on walking. by Jax Donovan, Aladren

Gia and him had spent some time going over what they thought the next Defense Against the Dark Arts class would be about since they had split off into two groups and then each group had to work out a secret question and answer. Gia thought that perhaps they were going to be tortured to see who would give the secret out first, but Jax knew she was only exaggerating. Although, he was in agreement that it was going to be some sort of information extraction, but he didn’t know what that would entail.

Of course, they were wrong. Very wrong and Jax was horrified to know that he was in the group that would have to take the potion to transform into that of his classmates. He wanted no part of it. It wasn’t because he thought that it was wrong or anything like that. He didn’t even care if he got a chick as a hair. But he didn’t want to turn into anyone. He already spent less time as himself than others spent as themselves. He just didn’t want to go through with that.

The pain was not nearly as intense as it was whenever he changed into a werewolf, but it was still a pain that he had to deal with. This pain was more like a dull headache by comparison, but it was nonetheless there and for anyone who was not accustomed to it, probably quite a shock to have to go through. Jax did not want to go through this. He did not want to have to feel this pain or uncomfortableness of a change when it wasn’t a full moon. He didn’t understand why Professor Pye would put him through this. He knew what Jax was and what he went through every month. Why would he make him go through it when it wasn’t necessary?

Jax glared at the Professor in the dark (or at least, he glared in the general direction of where he assumed the professor was still standing). His body elongated by a couple of inches. He watched his hands plump out and his body sag beneath extra weight. It didn’t take him long to figure out who’s hair it was that he had taken in the potion. There were only a handful of students in their class that were chubby and since Aiden had remained behind with him to take the potion, that left Chuck Fintac as the one whom he had changed into. He didn’t need to look in a mirror to know that his skin was pale and his hair was bright red. Chuck Fintac was as opposite to Jax as a person could get.

His hands grasped the desk in front of him while he attempted to gain some composure. He watched as those around him adjusted to their new bodies. He knew Chuck to be a pleasant person and mostly likely one of those ‘nice’ happy people. But that was not Jax and that was definitely not something that he could fake. He knew that part of the assignment was to try to confuse the ones who hadn’t changed but he was just going to have to fail that part of the lesson. As mucha s the Aladren in him made him demand for perfection in every lesson, Jax just couldn’t do it.

He waited for Professor Pye to help adjust his robes (Gia was the one who knew how to hem things, Jax never thought to learn too) and once that was done, he moved his would be body to a corner. Not used to both the extra inches as the extra pounds, he accidentally collided with a desk and chair as he maneuvered around. He didn’t understand the purpose of this lesson except for the professor to get some sort of amusement out of it. He could grasp the fact that in Defense, people might try to trick you so one needed to know their enemies and their allies, but Jax didn’t know either well enough to decipher who was who anyway. He might have been able to tell Sammy since he hung out with her enough and obviously his sister, but that was the extent of it.

Jax watched as the others filed in and the ‘imposters’ make their want into the crowd, but he remained where he was. When the real ones decided to clamour together, he would sneak in then to confuse, but for now, he would watch. Or, that was his plan until someone wandered up to him. He stared at them blankly to see what their intentions were.

6 Jax Donovan, Aladren Nothing to see here... keep on walking. 296 Jax Donovan, Aladren 0 5

Lena Westley, Aladren

February 17, 2016 11:00 PM

Stressed to the point of Nausea by Lena Westley, Aladren

In a particularly good mood, Lena walked into her least favorite class with an almost happy heart. The recent challenge had been distracting and even somewhat enjoyable, Aiden and she had agreed to restart the archery club, and her accent had been getting less and less in the way of executing spells properly. Whenever she thought about the last one she thought of going to Olivier and being fawned over and praised, but she still refrained from seeing him. She also knew that when the time came that they would be on speaking terms again he would almost certainly hold a grudge for her having ignored him in the first place and would not immediately return to being affectionate. But this wasn’t about Olivier. Well, everything in Lena’s world sort of went back to him, but today she was going to have an easier time ignoring him due to the distractions that had been presenting themselves of late.

Or so she thought.

As Lena removed her owl necklace, squirreling it away in the side pocket of her bag, she was thankful she wasn’t in the same group as Olivier. Instead, she’d be waiting by herself outside. She’d be surrounded by classmates, of course, but they were still of little concern to her. She hadn’t changed completely since coming here. Olivier had been sorted into the group that would be taking the potion. She felt that, without a doubt, she’d be able to pick him out of the hoard of third, fourth and fifth years. She was confident she’d be able to pick him out of any group, no matter the size, and only a much, much larger group would even be a challenge. Sure he was an excellent actor, a fantastic mimic- he did it every day but he didn’t pretend to be others. Being that used to it, she was sure he’d be an even more convincing version of the person than they were themselves. This, however, could be a dead giveaway. All she would need to do is look for the most charming and manipulative of the doppelgangers. If that didn’t work, she just needed to look for the person who’d turn away from her.

This assignment was going to hurt. She might not be the one taking the awful potion but her stomach was already starting to churn. Usually Olivier and she didn’t need to interact despite being in the same class. It was both painful to see him and reassuring. Despite needing distance she was comforted in the most masochistic way just by seeing him.

She left her bag and her seat and headed to the door of the classroom. This was the perfect opportunity to run to the restroom. The intense distress below her abdomen wouldn’t be relieved by the trip but she could use the deserted girls room to rid herself of the nauseated feeling creeping over her. Taking a left into the hallway that lead to her would-be sanctuary, she left the others to talk amongst themselves. She heard the friendly, young Teppenpaw girl starting to give details about herself so that others could identify her later. Straying from the pack right now might make things harder later but it seemed mildly like cheating. Besides, she didn’t share anything personal with anyone except with Olivier. Or she used to.

The thought made her feel even more unwell. Unfortunately the feeling didn’t subside quickly even when on her own. She tried to think of pleasant things first- only to have everything remind her of him. So she tried to clear her mind instead. That, at least, provided some relief. Her head had started to pound on the walk to the loo, dread leading to worry. Not wanting to spend too long away from the rest of the group, she tried to pull herself together faster, and returned when the pounding in her head had at least dulled. She returned just as the last few classmates of her group were filing into the classroom.

Lena disliked how poorly lit the classrooms were, but she was able to see tolerably if she opened her eyes wide enough. When there was absolutely no light, though, she felt blinder than anyone else. She knew theoretically that no one else could see either, but she could feel them shuffling forward and making their way into the classroom and here she was not quite shell shocked to be in absolute dark. Of course, it might not be absolutely dark, but being night blind she couldn’t tell. “Lumos” always got her through the midnight walks up the stairs to the Aladren fifth year girls dormitory and safely to her bed, but casting it now was impossible. Immediately after thinking this she walked directly into the corner of a desk, yelping a little. Stepping to the left, to avoid the edge of the desk she proceeded to trip over a bag left on the floor, and banged her knee on the stool behind it.

Normally Olivier would come to her side, but she knew that wouldn’t happen. Even if they had been on different “teams”, that wouldn’t have mattered before. Now though it was different. Even if he had been entering with her he wouldn’t have been beside her, which would have been strange enough compared to how it used to be, but he also wouldn’t come at the sound of her in distress. Mild distress but even so. He would have been there. Not wanting to be seen as uncooperative, she didn’t return to her seat. Instead she went to the corner of the room, the lights coming on before she’d gotten there. She didn’t know anyone well enough to tell who they were apart from Olivier and possibly Clark, but really even though she considered Clark a friend and she knew quite a bit about him, chatty thing that he was, she wasn’t sure she could pick him out like she could her brother.

What was strangest was seeing another Lena closer to the door. She looked in the direction of the imposter, noticing the strange way they were speaking. Were they even speaking with a Welsh accent? She turned her head away, she didn’t really care. It occurred to her that her brother would have had the same reaction to her, which pained her again. The injury recently sustained throbbed along with her thoughts, and she decided she’d only interact with someone when they spoke to her. She wasn’t in the mood to play the nice witch, she was content being the quiet witch who had a slightly worse grade in class participation.

Her good mood had been completely replaced with a bad one.

7 Lena Westley, Aladren Stressed to the point of Nausea 279 Lena Westley, Aladren 0 5

John Umland

February 17, 2016 11:59 PM

We're definitely both up to no...<i>thing but</i> good. by John Umland

Lena Westley had her disadvantages as a person to talk to, but she had two things going for her: John didn’t think she spent a lot of time with the real Liac and knew she didn’t spend a lot of one-on-one time with John in his usual form. They were in some of the same groups and probably had the same best friend, but didn’t hang out enough outside of the library or the Science Club for John to think that either of them had a strong chance of recognizing the other on gestures and facial expressions alone. As long as he kept his notebook in his pocket and didn’t start rambling about the evolution of magical species in the pigeon-and-dove family, he thought he was relatively safe with her.

Assuming, of course, that she was really her. There was that. He was counting on people assuming he was someone else just because he didn’t act like himself, but he couldn’t forget that half the people in the room were counting on the exact same thing from him and everyone else. He still had to be careful. At least approaching another – apparent – Aladren might help him throw off suspicion of being one. He imagined most people were going to avoid their own apparent Housemates for fear of being recognized by those who knew them best.

He tried to examine her more closely without it being obvious he was doing that or – worse – giving the impression he was thinking about something other than the assignment. He was curious about what the exact limits and possibilities of Polyjuice were, but not curious enough to seriously want to be kicked in the shins just to see if he’d still feel the results after he got his own body back. Unfortunately, though, he was only really good at reading people he already knew well, so all he gathered from a decently short glance was that she had dressy witch shoes and that his approach had probably just made her uncomfortable. Which made him uncomfortable. Wasn’t right, making people uncomfortable, at least not people who posed no threat to his family’s Great Secret. He reminded himself that he had a mission and that he could probably arrange matters so she never knew for sure that he was the jerk who’d been forward with someone he thought was pretty well-known as shy. That wouldn't actually solve the problem, but it would at least prevent more problems later....

John stopped himself from nodding in agreement with her criticism of his terrible logic in the nick of time and just grinned at the quite reasonable question even though he wanted to make a Descartes joke, hoping he looked like he had only a general idea of what she was talking about and was just a guy taking advantage of an unusually social class to talk to an aesthetically pleasing girl. He briefly considered trying to act as though he thought she had just referred to the end point of the digestive tract, but decided there were limits to just how low he could sink when his life was not actually among the stakes in the game. Besides, from what talking John had overheard Liac do over the years, such humor probably wasn’t really the Teppenpaw's style anyway. If Pye had proven himself a true force of evil and forced John to cart Park’s likeness around, he probably would have had to act like that because everyone would have known something was seriously wrong with Park the moment he passed up a chance like that, but Pye had some small inclinations toward mercy and Liac didn't seem that bad.

“I, uh, guess you really are an Aladren, anyway, because I’m just guessing from context about what you just said,” he lied cheerfully, thinking fast as he did. He’d never stand up to examination for a split second, but he couldn’t let her guess that he was trying to avoid a confrontation. He thought it was reasonable to point out that people might not believe Lena was Lena if she confronted anyone, but his real thoughts were not ones he should share. Was the fact that she had suggested confrontation a hint that she wasn’t really quiet little Lena, or was her apparent willingness to engage in confrontation with her double really good, solid evidence that she was who she said she was? He wanted to pull Liac’s hair out, and not to figure out if John’s head would still hurt when he got it back. This was going to make him more paranoid than the twenty seconds of midterm he’d spent sure that Julian had figured Certain Things out had. “Professor Pye just said to find our group, so we should probably focus on that. I’m sure the fakes will be super-obvious once they approach us anyway.”

That, John thought in disgust, was weak. He did not like not being able to do a job right, no matter how good the reason for holding back was. “It’s too bad Olivier and Tobias had to drink the potion – we could have all recognized each other and got rid of four fakes right there,” he continued quickly, hoping to distract her and make himself sound more credible at the same time. “Do you think I should just shout their names and see who turns his head? I read once that people always look around when they hear their own names.”

As he spoke, most of John’s attention was on how to get around using any name for her at all without being rude or making it obvious that he didn’t know if Liac would address her as ‘Lena’ or ‘Miss Westley,’ a problem which hadn’t occurred to him he might have when he first spoke to her. A second later, though, he realized that he’d mentioned reading something and felt a flutter of panic. Did Liac read for fun? Was that a thing it would not be hugely weird to read about? He and four other people had all gone through an espionage-and-detectives phase at the same time back home, so some stuff along those lines probably wasn’t as odd as knowing as much as he did about family Columbidae (even his mother, a woman who’d allegedly taught herself a good bit of Old English on a whim, seemed to find his fascination with birds a bit odd, though she did acknowledge there was some practical value to his ongoing research about how magical climates like Sonora’s affected migration patterns and populations), but the only thing separating his old friends from Aladren was their inability to use wands….

Hopefully Lena was Lena and was therefore possibly just socially isolated enough to think everyone read a lot. John thought it was only by coincidence that he knew there were people who didn’t always carry a book on them somewhere. Maybe she was one of those lucky creatures who had never figured out that baffling fact.

16 John Umland We're definitely both up to no...<i>thing but</i> good. 285 John Umland 0 5

Kelsey Atwater,Crotalus

February 18, 2016 4:51 PM

Hmm... by Kelsey Atwater,Crotalus

Kelsey felt a bit odd about the whole Defense lesson for today. She didn't really want to be someone else or have someone else be her. What if she had to be in the body of someone who wasn't pure or have someone like that in hers? The thought was truly stomach churning.

Still, the Crotalus would never let on that it was something was bothering her. She had a tendency to not really be emotional as after all, a lack of self control showed poor breeding and Kelsey naturally had excellent breeding. She didn't create scenes like some people would and would hate to have some thing like that damage her flawless reputation as the ideal pureblood lady. That meant not visibly showing emotional distress no matter how she felt inside.

Of course, the idea of someone else in her body doing such a thing bothered her immensely. If someone hurt her reputation, she'd have to do something about it without doing more damage to it herself. Kelsey was not about to let someone get away with destroying her. Though quite honestly, it would be impossible for anyone who wasn't a pureblood to fake her general proper mannerisms. She didn't even think the pureblood boys could manage it.

As it turned out, she didn't have to worry about this because she would be in the group taking the potion. Still, she sincerely hoped she'd turn into another pureblood. Being in the body of someone who wasn't would make her feel dirty.

Cautiously, Kelsey took a sip of the yellow-a somewhat subdued shade of yellow, but still yellow-potion. It tasted...rather pleasant. She had a feeling it must have come from one of the Teppenpaws. Please let it be Jemima .

That wasn't to be the case. She began to grow and her hair got much shorter. Certain things were missing-not that they were all that big anyway-and a certain thing that no proper young lady should ever ever think about was uncomfortably present.

Kelsey reached into her bag and pulled out her compact, her fears realized when the face of Owen Brockert stared back at her. She did not want to be a guy and the fact that he was a distant cousin of hers made her feel even creepier. But at least he's a pureblood .

As she went to get her robes resized-they were uncomfortably tight, much tighter than anything that the third year would normally wear, because it wasn't appropriate for young ladies to wear tight clothing-and the others came back in, Kelsey was struck by another issue. Owen-like most Teppenpaws-was hopelessly nice-and to everyone. Not that she considered herself a nasty person by any means, but she didn't know if she could fake Teppenpaw. Especially with people who weren't pure. Though she didn't know who anyone was right now except for the real Owen.

The easiest way to make people think she was the real Teppenpaw boy would be to attach herself to one of the Jemimas. Unfortunately, if it happened to be the real one, she'd figure out that Kelsey wasn't Owen in ten seconds flat.

She sat there contemplating what to do until someone approached her. "Oh, hello there." Kelsey replied in a friendly tone that she hoped wasn't too over the top and fake. She placed a warm smile on her face.

11 Kelsey Atwater,Crotalus Hmm... 305 Kelsey Atwater,Crotalus 0 5

Makenzie Newell [Crotalus]

February 18, 2016 5:07 PM

The third twin by Makenzie Newell [Crotalus]

Something felt very wrong about today’s lesson. Aside from the fact that it probably meant changing her hair, which she had gotten into a very nice looking high ponytail, the topic of polyjuice potion rocked her to her core, an immediate nausea settling into her stomach. She’d had enough talk of the thing to last her a lifetime, thank you very much, and was not particularly interested in exploring it.

Still, Makenzie could not very well object or try to pull herself from the lesson. “Personal reasons” would not suffice as an excuse, not to mention that even attempting would probably reflect poorly on her family, leading Professor Pye, a Pureblood like herself, to believe that it was used in her home life in unfitting and perhaps even illicit ways. Did anyone ever actually use polyjuice potion innocently?

So she did it. She drank the potion, doing her best not to gag at its awful taste and texture. How Delphine did this so often, she had no idea. She could have figured it out upon further thought--dedication to family was something they shared, and Makenzie knew she would probably do the same thing in that situation--but the initial knee-jerk reaction to the horrible experience that was drinking the potion and changing her appearance was so potent that for a moment, it was all she could think about.

The fourth year did not feel very different despite the potion. Apparently, in all regards to things one could feel about oneself, whomever she had become was quite similar to her. The first thing she could observe was the change to her hair, which had lost its bright redness. That was expected, given how genetically rare red hair was. Makenzie produced a compact mirror from her belongings to see her new face and solidify her new identity, and…

Makenzie groaned. She didn’t know who she was.

Scarlett and Savannah Brockert were identical twins. She had enough trouble telling them apart as things were normally, but now how was she supposed to know which one she was? Well, she decided that she would just have to pick. It was unfortunate that she didn’t know either one very well; if she knew at least one, she could more easily pass as her. So who to pick, the Teppenpaw or the Pecari, Savannah or Scarlett?

She decided to call herself Savannah, basing her assumption of their general personalities on their House stereotypes and thinking she could manage Teppenpaw more. Not much work was needed on her robes (Good to know we’re about the same size. If we become friends, we could share clothes!), but she did feel a bit naked without here Crotalus insignia and jewelry. She took down her hair to be more nondescript, mourning the loss of that beautiful ponytail, and it was time.

The real people returned, the lights came back on, and the game was afoot. Makenzie approached someone with a kind albeit nervous smile. “Hello,” she said fairly gently. “I am Savannah Brockert of the Western Brockerts. Would you like to ask me a question, or should I ask you?”

12 Makenzie Newell [Crotalus] The third twin 291 Makenzie Newell [Crotalus] 0 5

Araceli Arbon, Crotalus

February 19, 2016 8:42 AM

It's real for me (desperately seeking Kenzie) by Araceli Arbon, Crotalus

She had thought she’d faced the worse two classes at Sonora - after all, whoever heard of intermediates making polyjuice or learning legilimency? But then Professor Pye, damn him, had thought it would be such a fun idea to use the advanced potions projects for a lesson in intermediate lie detection. She’d thought about skipping it but she was scared of looking suspicious. She’d skipped out on kneazles - not that anyone probably remembered that - and had tried to avoid the Boggart class (annoyingly, Professor Pye had rescheduled it due to illness, so she had faked her own headache on the wrong day and had to face the thing - she had opted for dispelling it suspiciously quickly, before it could take the form of her real self drinking the potion. Not that she was afraid of that, but her biggest fear was being found out, and that would represent that, rather graphically). She tried to look neutral as Professor Pye gave the instructions for the class. This could go horribly, horribly wrong. If she took the Potion, she would have to manage her next dose of her own potion carefully… She couldn’t take it whilst she was still here, having to be under the effects of polyjuice, as she’d turn back into herself. However, if she left it too long, her own would wear off underneath and she would turn back into herself when the new one wore off. She normally took her doses in the bathrooms between classes, if she could, so she might just about be alright. If taking polyjuice on polyjuice was even safe - it might just have some horrid side-effect whereby she became a hybrid mess of Araceli and someone else. She also didn’t know what would happen if she gave her hair to someone else. Was it Araceli’s hair? Which of them would the person turn into? Again, assuming that polyjuicing with a polyjuiced person’s hair didn’t just make a mess of you. She had done her best to research this, without looking suspiciously keen on the subject, but apparently these were not amongst the most pressing questions that elementary level writers on the subject felt compelled to answer.

Feeling guilty and anxious, she deposited a strand of hair with Professor Pye. A small giggle escaped her as she also removed her necklace… The little tree, the same that all three sisters had, but with an ‘A; woven into the branches - proof that she was Araceli, not one of the others. Proof she had always diligently worn as she played her part. And now she had to remove it, to make it easier for someone to pass as her under polyjuice. The irony of it. She hoped her strange response would be chalked up to nerves. Looking around, a lot of people didn’t look very comfortable about the situation.

She took her place in the corridor, her stomach twisting. Makenzie wasn’t with her. Makenzie was going to be someone else… She wanted to find her. This must be so weird for her room-mate too, and she could picture seeing it in her eyes, whoever’s eyes they had become, and knowing. Sharing a look that understood so much more about this than anyone else in the room. But she couldn’t fully suppress a little doubt… What if Makenzie didn’t want to be found, at least not by her? She could just want to play the game, and help the fakes win, but there was a doubt beyond that in Delphine’s mind… What if she enjoyed giving her a taste of her own medicine? She knew Makenzie didn’t blame her for what had happened. But perhaps they weren’t friends either. She had felt they were. She was the one who had been here for the last two and a half years, and she really cared about Kenzie. But she had seen her hug Araceli at their Christmas party. Luckily, she thought, no one else had. She didn’t know what she wanted from Kenzie after she left - they weren’t exactly going to write personal correspondence or get together to chat about the good old days. But it had been real for her, and when she saw Kenzie hug the real Araceli, with so much warmth, she realised that she might just be a placeholder. That none of this counted for Kenzie, and that she was just waiting to get the real Araceli back, even though it was Delphine who had braided her hair, listened to her worries and told her her own for the better part of their friendship. Kenzie didn’t blame her, but perhaps she saw her as nothing more than a pawn in her father’s game of chess - one who, with time, would be removed from the board. Perhaps she didn’t care about her.

They entered the room and, as the lights came back up, she scanned the crowd. She did a slight double take as she caught sight of the other Araceli, wondering who was inside that copy (but relieved to see at least that it seemed to have turned into Araceli with no noticeable side-effects). She hoped it wasn’t a boy. She knew it was hard to judge seeing as she was hijacking her sister’s body too, but it just felt so much more wrong for some teenage boy to be wearing Araceli. She imagined Clark Dill or John Umland inside her little sister and her skin crawled. But as she looked around for Kenzie, there was no instant snap… No moment of recognition. She supposed she should be glad, in a way, that it wasn’t so easy. If you could learn to simply stare into another person’s eyes and recognise that it wasn’t them on the inside, she would be in big trouble. She suppressed the urge to just call out Kenzie’s name, as she suspected it might be regarded as cheating - though she thought it was also a pretty good war tactic; she knew from hours of drilling how hard it was to respond instinctively to a name that wasn’t yours, and to not react to the one that was.

She had given some thought, whilst outside, to what she should do. The secret questions were of no use to her. It didn’t tell her which fake was which, especially if Makenzie was trying to hide. She needed to strike a more personal note. Perhaps it wasn’t as easy as just seeing Makenzie shining through from the inside, but if she asked the right question, she was sure the other girl’s reaction would give her away. Of course, it needed to be subtle enough not to arouse suspicion from others. She thought she could get away with this, under the guise of playing along with the lesson, using her own knowledge and skills alongside the class questions, which she assumed they were meant to do, as some of the fakes were in on the information.

“Hello,” she smiled, as she came face to face with someone. “Could you remind me, have you met my cousin Amelia?” Whilst that didn’t rule out the other Purebloods who had attended their party, she thought that their recognition and remembrance of the event would be noticeably different to Makenzie’s. A bland or befuddled ‘yes’ was what she expected from most. To Kenzie, the question would mean so much more, especially given the circumstances.

13 Araceli Arbon, Crotalus It's real for me (desperately seeking Kenzie) 290 Araceli Arbon, Crotalus 0 5

DH Skies

February 20, 2016 1:36 AM

OOC - please read! by DH Skies

There has been a bit of confusion about how this class is meant to work which is being clarified via discussion on the OOC board. Please check there (and contribute any ideas!).

0 DH Skies OOC - please read! 26 DH Skies 0 5

Barnaby Pye

February 21, 2016 8:44 AM

...my sentiments exactly. by Barnaby Pye

Barnaby wanted to know what exactly his brother was playing at, giving them all each other's hair. He had been tempted to share his particularly arbitrary secret question and answer with his group while they had been working to come up with one as he was certain his classmates weren't nearly as clever as he, since correctly answering that the First Goblin Wars incited riots in the watermelon trades because of a misrepresentation of the strawberry as the best fruit by the leader of one rebel faction was not something that most people would likely get. However, not only did he know his classmates wouldn’t understand the significance nor the symbolism of his fruity ways, but he also knew he as venturing a little into the ‘absurd’ if he was looking at things from a ~~more rational~~ less intelligent point of view. This was why he and Tarquin got along so well- they spoke each others' language. They understood the need for impersonality amongst classroom relations, they felt no need to pry into the private lives of their peers (although sometimes Barnaby did feel this strange itch in the pit of his stomach—which he usually ignored…) and they only needed each other.

Today, however, he was masquerading as one of his classmates. Fortunately for himself he had always been rather observant for his age. Unfortunately for him, he most recently been distracted by a dark, curly head and had been slacking when it came to keeping note of all his classmates' most recent behaviors so if he were to get, say, Andrew Carey's hair, he wouldn't be able to do much else other than 2nd year Andrew Carey which, fortunately for him, wasn't likely as Carey was one of the ones destined to take the potion. On the other hand, as he sipped the polyjuice potion assigned to him and a rather good yet unusual taste touched his tongue, he was interested to find that while he became shorter and his hair grew longer and darker he was disappointed to see how it lay straight. His hands, too, were not the right size and did not have that particular freckle which he knew could be found just there. A glance in the classroom window showed a very Asian looking face staring back at him and Barnaby tilted his head, watching as the hair shifted and a creamy neck was exposed. Interesting. He raised his new, more delicate hand and took pleasure in the Lauren Song in the window that imitated his move. He had never really considered polyjuice potion before. It was…satisfying, to say the least, in it’s efficacy and Barnaby noted it’s usefulness for the future.

He cleared his throat and tried out his new voice to himself. “Hi, I’m Lauren Song,” he said quietly, listening to see how his voice had changed. Though his accent was gone, his brain had still caused him to pronounce his words in that crisp manner that he usually spoke in. Then, he remembered that Lauren Song was one of those girls, the bubbly sort with friends and he nearly smashed his head into the wall. This didn’t bode well for him, he was not a social person aside from his antagonistic remarks to Jax and Gia Donovan and the brief friendship he’d had with his other roommate in the first year.

Murmurs of spells around him alerted Barnaby to the impending arrival of the donors and the real Lauren Song and so he, too, raised his wand to make the necessary adjustments, pleased that he had not needed to ask his brother for help. Little good that would have done, Alfie likely would have made the collar of his robes so tight that he choked or, at the very least, had angry red marks around his neck for days to come—his older brother was not very subtle in his ways, Barnaby thought viciously as he found himself a new position in the classroom and readied to mingle with the additions of the real students. He would need to distinguish himself from the copies somehow and so had transfigured a broken bit of quill into a bobby pin to push some of his hair out of his face. A small detail like that wasn’t something that many copies likely would have thought of, Barnaby thought. And though he wasn’t sure if Song actually wore bobby pins, it was incongruous enough to be unnoticeable at first glance while also working as something that she might have had on before entering the class yet had also forgotten about when asked to remove distinguishable markers since it really wasn’t that eye-catching of a hair ornament.

It was a glance towards Clark Dill that had Barnaby anxiously thinking about the sorts of shoes his female classmates wore. He could remember varying types of shoes but nothing that stood out to him as particularly Song and so instead kept the black color of his shiny, black oxfords and transfigured them to appear more feminine. He couldn’t remember if he was supposed to know this spell or not yet, but he also didn’t really care—it was something that Tarquin likely would have gotten upset with him about as his friend was very paranoid about everything, including appearing smarter than he was in class because he didn’t want any professor taking a special interest in him, but Barnaby wanted to win. He wanted to see if he was able to properly infiltrate himself into a group, if he could fool people’s closest friends into thinking he was the true copy. He needed to know how good of an actor he was, to what degree he needed to perfect his skills. And then, he needed to learn how to brew this marvelous potion which would one day be incredibly useful to Tarquin and himself. He’d have to write to his best friend right away, he thought, the moment he got back to his dorm. He would have to use their coded language, of course, and since they had never discussed the possibility of polyjuice before he would have to rely on Tarquin’s on the spot thinking ability, but he had confidence in the younger boy.

He turned to the closest person to him, Owen Brockert as it turned out, and gave them a glittering smile. “Hello,” he said jovially, doing his best to sound like a chipper third year without a care in the world. “Weird class, isn’t it? But it’s kind of fun, too.” Owen was one of those who had given a hair, he remembered, so there was a chance he was talking with a fake, which made him feel better since he was almost sure that Lauren wasn’t super close with the other fakes. He was very glad that the first person he had to fool with either Owen Brockert or not but most definitely not Ginger or Jemima since he needed some time to figure out how to be a perfectly nice Teppenpaw before he tried to fool his new face’s best friends and roommates.

10 Barnaby Pye ...my sentiments exactly. 298 Barnaby Pye 0 5

Jamie Park, Pecari

February 22, 2016 5:20 AM

"Fake it 'til you make it" has always been my motto by Jamie Park, Pecari

Jamie Park was one of those wizards who’d been born with Felix Felicis in his veins. He coasted through life on luck but was spoilt enough by his parents to believe it was his own pure talent. He was intrigued by the day’s lesson, which actually sounded like fun for a change. Jamie liked games because games, for him, usually meant winning. He also had a step up on this occasion, as he was one of the fifth years favoured with both sets of information. Whilst even he wasn’t able to see this pure fluke as talent, he did feel on some level that he had inherently deserved the advantage.

He gulped down his dose of potion, which was a far from pleasant experience. It tasted musty, with a coppery tang. He felt his insides writhe and his skin bubble, watched it as it paled and his slight frame readjusted itself. Well, he wasn’t a girl. Being a girl might have had its plus points if he’d been able to spend the hour somewhere private rather than wandering around a classroom chatting but, unless that was on offer, he’d rather not be one. Not that he thought he’d have trouble pulling it off - you just had to squeal a lot and talk about boys - but it would be kind of weird. He shifted around, getting used to his new body. Even though it was another boy’s it felt different. Jamie was pretty small for his age, and it was interesting being bigger. Not just taller, but bigger in… pretty much every way. He was suddenly glad no one had turned into him. He wasn’t sure, after having a go in someone else’s body, that he would really want anyone else to be in a position to make comparisons…. He wondered who he was, and whether they were…. representative of boys his age. Luckily he wasn’t tall enough to be Clark. He hoped to Merlin he wasn’t John. Being John would have been mortifying its own right, and knowing this about his and John’s various merits would have been a lifelong source of humiliation.

As they lined up to have their clothes adjusted and so on, he whispered a quick ‘Psst, who am I?’ to one of his classmates. Oliver. He was Oliver Ferguson. The cocky smile, usually present on Jamie’s lips, returned.He was himself pureblood but not one of those capital-P society types. Nonetheless, luck was once again on his side; Jamie Park already swaggered around as if he owned the place, so impersonating some other over-entitled, arrogant snob was a cake-walk for him. Assignments had a way of falling in his favour that way - if he skim read for an exam, the one or two bits that stuck were always the ones that were asked.

Once they were set to mingle, he found himself being approached by Caelia Lucan. Maybe. When the girl opened her mouth, he thought it sounded a bit… off (in fact, it sounded almost exactly like Jamie did when he made fun of Shino, although he was sure that he was much more convincing). And had she just said ‘we are we’? He hesitated. Posh people did say stupid things. He had never really spoken to Caelia and couldn’t be sure she wasn’t quite as stupid sounding as this person.

“I’m afraid I must insist upon us following proper procedures, Miss Lucan,” he said, straightening his back and making his tone as snooty as he could. Even though Caelia was Oliver’s social class, she was a girl, and being stupid, so he thought he probably had the right to lord it over her a little. bit.

“How do you recognise an imposter?” he asked her seriously. Not having been part of the group that came up with the question, and not being all that bright or in tune with the concept of subtlety, he didn’t realise that the whole beauty of the question lay in its ability to be asked, and the answer to be judged, in such a way as it didn’t immediately reveal itself as the security question (thus making it harder for eavesdroppers to pick up on the covert exchange). He therefore delivered it in rather a more demanding tone, looking Caelia right in the eyes and making it quite clear she was being asked something of Significance.

13 Jamie Park, Pecari "Fake it 'til you make it" has always been my motto 284 Jamie Park, Pecari 0 5

"Jemima Wolseithcrafte"

February 22, 2016 4:38 PM

What do you mean? by "Jemima Wolseithcrafte"

Waking up early had never been difficult for John Spencer, but he had loathed it the first few weeks after the midterm. Travelling between England and Arizona wasn’t fun though Jack was enjoying the new experience of living somewhere else. It had been difficult to adjust his first year, but he was used to it now. He liked his coursework and his room-mate and having his common room hidden away in the library and the large, delicious meals in Cascade Hall. He wanted to make more friends and play Quidditch, but the challenges were giving him some opportunity to observe his older classmates instead. As he’d expected, his cousin was not leadership material nor a team player.

When Jack walked into class, Professor Pye told them to dress down until they were all practically wearing the same thing. He was wearing his robes like Pye had asked, standard black just like everyone else, and removed the leather-banded watch he always wore. He wasn’t sure what the point was, but he knew it would have to do with identification. With brown hair and blue eyes standing at an average height, Jack didn’t really stand out in any particular way, except that he was a British wizard at an American school. Still, unless there was some sort of change in his appearance…

That was it. Jack’s eyes lit up at the possibility. Taking a Polyjuice Potion sounded like fun, the sort of academic fun that Jack enjoyed, not like searching for an exit in a formidable maze on a broom. He was one of the lucky ones to stay in the classroom when Professor Pye split them, and Jack eagerly jumped into the queue. Most of the witches had left the room, making it a high possibility that he would transform into a witch, but Jack really hoped to turn into a wizard.

It was exciting, taking a potion like this, but then Jack received his vial and felt ill. He was going to turn into Jemima Wolseithcrafte. He could feel his heart thumping a little quicker. When the lights were switched off, Jack uncorked his vial, held his nose and drank up. He could feel the changes happening in his body immediately and he shivered until his body stopped convulsing both inside and out. Once it was finished, Jack transfigured a sheet of parchment into a mirror and took a good look at Jemima Wolseithcrafte’s face.

The peers he knew best from his class were Barnaby and Jemima, and even then he didn’t know Jemima that well. He knew quite a bit about her family since Adam and Francesca were best friends, but that was the extent. Copying movements and particular idiosyncrasies to convince everyone else was going to be difficult. From what he knew, Jemima was very close with her room-mates, Teppenpaws Jack didn’t know at all. He adjusted the size of his robes and shoes, glad now that Professor Pye had ordered them all to wear the same thing. The only problem would be shoes. He transfigured them into flats he’d seen Charlotte wear often, hoping these were shoes Jemima would wear as well.

The other half of the students returned and Jack felt nervous. Would he be convincing enough? He couldn’t help but look for Jemima, attempting to surreptitiously observe her movements now that he had to be her. Still, it would not do to simply stand around and wait for someone to approach him. Jemima was outgoing like he, so Jack decided to act as though he were trying to figure out who the imposters were as well. That’s what Jemima would do in this situation, wouldn’t she? And from what he’d seen in class and in the dining hall, Jemima seemed to have some kind of affectation towards Owen Brockert. That’d be easy to fake: find Owen and convince him that he was she.

He walked over to Lauren and Owen, an odd pair to see together, hoping that one of them was an imposter. It was nerve-wracking, attempting to be someone else like this. “Hi Lauren, hi Owen,” he said with a smile. Did she bat her eyelashes? Jack felt a little ill at the thought of flirting with a wizard, but he tried to ignore it. Jemima was confident and that was easy enough to emulate even in another person’s body. Lauren said something first and Jack nodded. “This is fun, but it’s super weird seeing myself walking around. You guys probably feel the same way. So I’m supposed to ask you guys the question my group came up with, right?” He had no idea what question the group of ‘real students’ had come up with together, so Jack decided to wing it and go with his own. It would have to be very general and vague. If they were ‘real,’ they would catch him immediately. If not, they would be exposing themselves, though figuring out that they were imposters wouldn’t do much for him. I’m brilliant, he thought before opening his mouth.

“What is the best thing about Sonora?”

OOC: Using the further clarifications from the OOC board.

0 "Jemima Wolseithcrafte" What do you mean? 0 "Jemima Wolseithcrafte" 0 5

John Spencer, Aladren

February 22, 2016 6:25 PM

OOC: Clarification for points. (nm) by John Spencer, Aladren

40 John Spencer, Aladren OOC: Clarification for points. (nm) 299 John Spencer, Aladren 0 5

The Real Jemima, Teppenpaw

February 22, 2016 8:08 PM

One, two, three birds with one big, friendly stone! by The Real Jemima, Teppenpaw

Jemima bit her lip as they waited outside the classroom. She had sometimes played spies with Francesca and Theodore, when they were all still at home. Theodore and Francesca always won. They always knew how to intercept her and Ingrid’s messages and break their secret codes. Looking back, it was probably just the same old story of her and Ingrid’s life… Francesca and Theodore were better because they were older. They had probably done ridiculously simple things that she herself would be more than capable of coming up with, like sneaking in and hiding behind the curtains and then not jumping out and yelling ‘HA!’ (which is what she and Ingrid had always done and now, looking back, may have been a mistake, as what they thought was Francesca and Theodore’s secret code had then always mysteriously changed by the time they intercepted any of their messages….). Nonetheless, she had long lived with the worry that she might be a terrible spy, and so today had something to prove.

However, she didn’t want to win by cheating. As they lined up in the corridor she didn’t try to exchange any extra information, or remind people of facts about herself (and really wished that Ginger wouldn’t share that particular one about herself. Jemima had been taught that such a situation would be a source of deepest shame, and it made her uncomfortable to hear Ginger talk about it so openly and casually, because it might make people think her friend was dirty - she knew it was meant to make her feel that way, but she tried to just not even think about that because she didn’t want to be ignoring what her mother said or thinking bad things about her friend, but that would all be a lot easier if Ginger just didn’t shout about it). She trusted that she and Owen would be able to spot the fakes a million miles off. She was pretty confident about sorting out the Laurens and the Gingers too.

She considered her tactics for working this out. Just going and asking the questions was kind of boring, and didn’t really prove anything about her ability to be intuitive and read a person (and hence prove she was a good spy really), plus some of the fifth years had the security questions. This was as big a problem, given that she was predominantly concerned with trying to find her friends, but she might have to interact with the older students too - or cunning fifth years who identified other fakes might pass on their security question to them. She also wasn’t sure how seriously any of the fakes were taking this, or in what spirit - whether they saw it as a class assignment, or were going to get into the role of spies. She didn’t want to get too carried away with interrogations if they didn’t see it as a game, because then they might not realise she was playing a part and get upset. Or think she was being mean, which would be un-Jemimaish, and then they might put her in the fake group! She would have to use her Teppenpaw wiles to her advantage, and kill with kindness.

The opportunities came thick and fast as the groups mingled, which wasn’t surprising given that there were six people she wanted to interview - seven if she counted her other self, but she was rather trusting her friends to provide the same service to her that she was to them. Ginger already seemed preoccupied with talking to herself, although one of her was decidedly more bouncy, whilst the other one look a little off put. Given that Ginger hadn’t seemed particularly disturbed by the experiment at hand, she had a strong suspicion which was which. An Owen was talking to a Lauren. Both of them looked a little bit ill at ease but that wasn’t really out of keeping with either of their personalities. She thought this was a fun lesson but from watching the other people waiting in the corridor, she had realised not everyone felt the same. Still, here was the opportunity to kill two birds with one big, cuddly stone. At least, it was until she joined the mix. Or rather, her evil identical twin. Still, she had nothing to fear, seeing as she knew she was the real her.

“Anyonghaseo, Lauren-y” she grinned, putting her arms around the other girl and silently judging her on the quality of her return hug. She gave a pause to assess the fluency of this Lauren’s Korean and how flawed she looked by having to do so, opting for the slightly more formal version of ‘hello’ in order to give a few more syllables to trip the other person up. The person could be a good mimic, but she thought it was a pretty tricky word to get right - Lauren had had to tell her it several times before she’d picked it up. She had approximately two other Korean phrases that she’d picked up over the years that she could resort to if these tests left her in doubt. Plus, she realised, the occasional Japanese word from going to sushi restaurants or totally made up nonsense that she could also try out. Both of those would confuse the real Lauren too, of course, but probably in different ways. She couldn’t quite say what ways, as she’d never tried talking to Lauren in Japanese or a made up language (although the latter totally had to be something they tried later - she bet they’d still be able to understand each other) but she was confident that she would know the difference when she saw it. She was too distracted by the fake Jemima to notice the minimal change in Lauren’s hair, even though it was something she normally might have picked up on.

“Hi Owen,” she also smiled, giving him a hug too and assessing for quality. “How’s the story going?” she interrogated, in the most upbeat and friendly tone imaginable.

“By the way,” she added, to the fake Jemima, whom she’d overheard a little as she approached, “You might want to work on your American accent a little more if you want to pass for me.”

13 The Real Jemima, Teppenpaw One, two, three birds with one big, friendly stone! 304 The Real Jemima, Teppenpaw 0 5

Aiden O'Neil, Teppenpaw

February 24, 2016 12:54 PM

A new girl. Faking an Araceli. by Aiden O'Neil, Teppenpaw

Aiden stared down at the unfamiliar hands that were now currently his own. Taking the potion had been such a strange sensation. The taste itself had been odd, as though the potion had been slightly off. Right after he had taken it, Aiden had feared that he had gotten a poor batch of it and he was going to transfigure into like some freakish version of himself and the person whose hair it was that he had taken. But then the transformation hit him and he had doubled over at the weird sensations and discomfort that it brought about. Aiden was not used to anything quite like that been. Why anyone had ever thought to create a potion as deceitful as this one was beyond him. How can anyone honestly feel that changing their features to another person’s and then walking around in their body was okay? If Aiden ever came across someone who did that to him, he would never forgive them. They would not be the person that he had thought they were and it would be such a betrayal. A dirty way of living, in his opinion.

But now he had to do this for class and he felt disgusted with it. Here he stood in a body that was not his own. From the looks of it, feminine hands, slender body, smaller than he was. He had let ‘his’ hands explore to figure out who it was, but as soon as he felt some things that were not at all things he owned, Aiden immediately dropped his hands to his sides in horror.

He was a girl!

HE WAS A GIRL?!

What nightmare was this? Aiden hustled to the window (or tried too, he tripped a couple of times on his robes) and found a fair skinned pretty blonde staring back at him. He was Araceli. Araceli. He didn’t know how to feel about this. Back when he first started school and Araceli and him had worked together (sort of), he thought that he would become friends with her. She had seemed really nice, albeit incredibly quiet, and he thought they would make a great team. But then as their time went on, she wasn’t that same girl anymore. She started talking and making other friends, like Duncan Brockert (Aiden guessed that there weren’t enough girls his own age to make friends with, so he had to look below a couple of years and Aiden couldn’t really compete with an older guy anyway) and Aiden got the distinct feeling that Araceli didn’t think much of him anyway. Not that Aiden could blame her. He wasn’t much to look at. His family were respectable and he was the heir to his mother’s name, but sometimes that wasn’t enough and besides, Aiden wouldn’t want to be friends with someone who cared about that anyway.

Feeling down, Aiden quietly adjusted his robes and shoes as best as he could and then slipped into the throng of students that entered the room. He spotted a familiar face in the crowd and made his way over to her with a bright smile. He made her greet her as he usually did, but Savannah’s formal greeting caught him off guard. Oh right, he was Araceli and not Aiden. He wasn’t sure how Araceli greeted people because she never formally greeted him. He didn’t even remember if Savannah had ever greeted him formally either, but he was sure it must have happened when they first met. “That is rather formal for two people who already know one another, Ms. Brockert.” Aiden said, hearing Araceli’s voice leave his mouth in the most creepy way. “It’s only polite for you to ask your question first.”

He couldn’t wait for this hour to be up.

6 Aiden O'Neil, Teppenpaw A new girl. Faking an Araceli. 287 Aiden O'Neil, Teppenpaw 0 5

Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw

February 25, 2016 11:57 AM

You're exactly the reason we need this lesson. by Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw

Tobi’s infatuation with the hair of the girls in his year was an odd one. At first he had thought it was perhaps of the romantic variety, an attachment of the kind that his cousin Liac often made. But he had quickly learnt (after a brief Quidditch season in which he was more than protective of Uzume Shinohara) that only one witch in particular got his heart beating really fast, and it wasn’t Shino who he was only attached to, as it turned out, because something about her confidant attitude reminded him of his little sister. As it turned out, now that he realised what it truly was to have a crush, hair was just one of a number of things that trigged those sorts of feelings in Tobi.

There were a good number of attractive witches in the Intermediates class, but there was really only one who caught his eye. His gaze had followed his classmates as they lined up to donate hair and then file out to the hallway to wait, unsure if he would rather have duplicates of her to remind him that they would get nowhere, or if he would rather she take on the appearance of someone else for the day, denying him those stolen moments when he tried to catch her eye in class but affording him at least one period where he could remain focused.

When he’d accepted his vial of potion from Professor Pye, allowing the bleary eyed professor amble time to write down who had received this particular vial and the thought crossed his mind for the first time that in the second scenario in which she donned someone else’s appearance there was no risk of him taking her hair and becoming her duplicate. If this were to be the case…Tobi didn’t even want to think about it. He didn’t think he’d be able to ever face her again. The lights went out and he tossed back the potion easily. It was thick but not unpleasant and sort of tasted like flowers though not the poisonous variety, and as he swallowed, he felt the effects of the potion beginning.

His legs shortened—one, then the other. He was tall for his age, but most of his height came from his legs, so this in and of itself was not a clue. He also kept his hair long, one of the only boys in the class to do so, which meant that his hair remaining at the length it was at clued him into likely having turned into a witch. The callouses from climbing trees and gardening disappeared from his hands and he reached up to feel the curls springing forward now, experimentally winding one around his finger, enjoying the way it felt against his (now) soft skin. It wasn’t her hair, to be sure, but it was a witch’s hair and Tobi felt utterly dirty being inside a witch’s body without her knowledge like this.

He moved a foot and nearly tripped over his robes, having taken too large a step for his now much smaller body and getting the hem of his robes caught underfoot. He cast a resizing charm and noticed that Clark Dill was transfiguring his shoes to appear more feminine, which Tobi saw as an opportunity to improve his “passing” and requested the spell from his fifth year classmate. The next year he’d be one of the eldest in the class and in the position to help out the younger years, but for now he was glad to be able to learn from the fifth years. It would be his last year with them until he was a sixth year (he couldn’t say he wasn’t glad to see the Westley twins moving on, while he thought Lena was perfectly nice, her brother was really weird, but he would miss Clark, and Jake Manger, too though he supposed Clark was his Quidditch rival and Jake his teammate so it wouldn’t be the last he’d see of them)

When the lights came back on and the rest of the class appeared again, he saw Ginger Pierce confronting Ginger Pierce and other classmates coming together to chat. He turned away from the witch whose hair he had ingested to find himself face to face with…someone who was, once upon a time, subject to his wandering gaze, once upon a time because he’d realised just how wonderful someone else truly was. He returned Araceli Arbon’s question with a smile. If it really was Araceli, though he was almost sure because he couldn’t think why a fake Araceli would start off a conversation like that. He filed away this information for further use though he really didn’t think it was something that he’d ever need to use since polyjuice potion just felt so utterly dirty and underhanded.

The question that was being asked was either a trick question or a real one. It was the sort that could really go either way and apart from their conversation so long ago when they’d bonded over music and family, Tobi couldn’t really say that he knew Araceli well enough to infer if she was the sort to attempt something like that to catch out the fakes. Once he had thought that they’d make good friends. Then she had come back the next year, slightly more talkative and still nice but…not quite the same and that had been the end of any burgeoning friendship. It was neither of their faults, really, Tobi supposed, when one stopped to think about it. But it still would have been nice to have a friend who appreciated classical music the same way he did.

In the end, he responded to Araceli’s question with neither an affirmative nor a negative but rather a non-response. “I’ve met so many people,” he said, his voice wobbling a bit, though he quickly cleared his throat with a polite cough as though the wobble was due only to a frog in his throat. “I’m so sorry if I can’t recall who is who.” He reminded himself that he was a Carey now and as such he had to behave accordingly. “No hard feelings though?” He was a Carey, but he was also Diana, Diana who though she dressed prettily had worn a baggy short to the second challenge and equally volunteered to be in a flying group.

10 Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw You're exactly the reason we need this lesson. 289 Tobias Reinhardt, Teppenpaw 0 5