Professor Pye
May 19, 2016 11:03 AM
Advanced Defense (Years VI & VII) by Professor Pye
The Advanced class had always been Alfie’s favourite to teach. The students there were there, as far as he know, by choice and had already seen enough that it was hard to shock them. This meant that Alfie was free to delve into rather intense subjects that he might have otherwise not been able to teach, subjects which he himself had only covered in such detail during his first year of Auror training. The class of the day, however, was not one of these as he was required to follow at least some sort of ciriculum guideline and it appeared that he had not quite hit all the points the previous year.No matter, he thought to himself as he brushed off his pants and stood up to start the class, making sure his sleeves were rolled up properly, he’d still do his best to make even a boring lesson interesting. He had no desire for his students to fall asleep and miss out on something that might very well save their lives later on down the line. Even if he didn’t want to actually be there.
“Right,” he said, clapping his hands together and simultaneously causing the chalk to start writing the main points of his lesson on the chalkboard as he hit them in his lecture. “Today we’ll be covering zombies and how to protect oneself from them. We’ll also briefly cover inferi which, it should be noted, is a distinctly different creature entirely. Though both can be found in Haiti, the zombie is native to the Southern United States while inferi are more commonly found in Great Britain. Though I warn ou, this lesson won’t be nearly as exciting as it sounds—if dealt with properly, the undead are actually quite boring. Unless, of course, you’re being attacked by an army of inferi, but that’s a whole other thing.”
Alfie smiled apologetically to his class and continued. “Next week we can start on nonverbal spells and duels, but for now we’ve got to stick with this, so bear with me. Who knows, maybe later on down the line you’ll find yourself alone in a swamp with an inferi or in a wood with a zombie and you’ll think back to this class and say to yourself, ‘my, I’m glad I paid attention during that horridly boring lecture.’ Then again, perhaps you won’t, but I don’t know what sorts of trouble you plan on making for yourselves after graduation and, quite frankly, I don’t care.”
“Zombies are corpses that have been re-animated for whatever purpose by a sorcerer. Like inferi they are considered to be a part of the Dark Arts because, unlike an inferi, a sorcerer would normally have to give up part of his or her soul in order to create a proper zombie. Zombies, with their greyish skin and rotting corpse smell should be quite easy to spot so I don’t think any of you could really be a victim of a surprise attack unless your nose was stuffed beyond belief but that’s what Pepperup Potions are for so I suggest you all take your medicine when it’s given to you.”
Of course, as per usual, Alfie had a hands-on part of his class prepared and so, after his lecture was finished, he cleared the room of desks and brought in a selection of dueling dummies set at two different speeds to comes towards the students. “As I stated earlier, zombies and inferi alike can be fended off with fire. I’d like the class to split into two groups. One half will deal with these dummies,” here he paused to gesture to the dummies that were set to go faster. “Which are our replacements for inferi since it would be frowned upon for me to actually bring inferi or zombies into the school. The other half of the class with deal with the zombie dummies,” and he moved to show the other group of dueling dummies.
“About halfway through we’ll switch so everyone can do both. I’ve charmed each set of dummies to have some of the characteristics of the creatures you’ll be fighting. The inferi dummies are faster and stronger, they will be harder to take down and some of them might give you a little shove. The zombie dummies, as I’m sure you’ve already noted those of you who are standing close to them, have a rather strong smell to them. They may also push you around but unlike inferi who becomes somewhat superhuman after being brought back, these zombie dummies are not as strong.”
“Well, then, you all have until the end of the period. So go about your business.”
OOC: 200 words, tag Pye if you need help (likely he’ll intervene), creativity, you know the drill!
Subthreads: Zombies (nm) by Professor Pye with Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
Inferi (nm) by Professor Pye
10
Professor Pye
Advanced Defense (Years VI & VII)
30
Professor Pye
1
5
Professor Pye
May 19, 2016 11:03 AM
Professor Pye
May 19, 2016 11:03 AM
Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
June 09, 2016 10:57 AM
Darn, knew I shouldn't have left the surgical mask at home.. by Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
The arts were things Isaac expected to be subjected to fairly often in life, but the Dark Arts were not. His family was not that kind of family, and while he had gathered that there were the occasional…insinuations about some parts of his sister’s family, or at least had been at one time, that was Alicia’s problem, not his. It made little difference to Isaac what the Pierces did to Alicia and the only way it could make any more of a difference to him what Alicia did to the Pierces was if she got careless and went to jail for it and the scandal negatively impacted his father’s business. Since he doubted Alicia would get that careless, he highly doubted the Dark Arts were ever going to have any impact on his life whatsoever.He had still signed up for Defense Against the Dark Arts voluntarily for two years in a row. Just because something was unlikely didn’t make it impossible, especially now that Douglas was expanding further into the east. Isaac was sure his side of the country had had its fair share of monsters, but there was no denying that the old East Coast families – the sorts who looked down on him – were the ones more associated with that kind of behavior. Better safe than sorry.
He supposed he could, if he squinted, take one of Professor Pye’s examples as a case in point – his mother was from the southeast, so he guessed it was possible that her flat refusal to let Isaac and Alicia, at least, wander too far out of her sight might make more sense than he would have previously thought. He thought it was far more likely that Mom was just high-strung than it was that she’d had a bad childhood experience involving a zombie, but one never knew. A few questions occurred to him – why would a sorcerer make a zombie, sacrificing a piece of his or her own soul, instead of an inferius if the inferius was stronger and faster? Why didn’t inferi smell like rotting corpses, as they certainly looked like ‘em? – but he assumed it was in the class reading somewhere and kept the questions to himself.
He was, unfortunately, close enough to the zombie dummies to smell them. He supposed they could blend in in some environments – he had an idea there were swamps that smelled really bad by themselves, so maybe – but they really didn’t fit in to a classroom. As nauseating as the odor was, though, Isaac decided to stick with them for the first part of the lesson for one reason and one reason only: they were easier to defeat. He reached for his wand as soon as Pye said well, then, not trusting the older wizard further than he could throw him, and tried to remember every fire spell he knew.
He could call fire up out of the air, but it worked better if he had something to actually set on fire, fire magic not being one of the kinds that came most readily to him. He kind of wished Pye had simulated the outdoors on the floor, as he thought Outside usually involved the ground being covered in flammable bits.
This was insane. Magical fire was a little different, but it was still hot and this was a room with people in it. Lighting candles, that was fine, conjuring up balls of light to put in a jar, sure, but throwing fire around at zombies? That was insane. Thinking as quickly as he could, Isaac drew as wide a circle as he could stretch for of very small flames around himself, hoping that would at least hold them off until he could think of something better. His first thought was to use parchment to make a hard leather shield that could be on fire on the outside, but then he realized that would a) only protect one side of him and b) be far too dramatic to ever, ever do in front of any of his classmates.
As he was thinking, a zombie dummy shuffled closer than he liked to his circle. “Incendio!” he snapped, and the dummy went down. “Sorry if that doesn’t do much for the smell,” he added to his nearest neighbor, still trying to think of a better way to protect himself than standing in a circle and dueling all comers one-on-one like some kind of idiot hero.
16
Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
Darn, knew I shouldn't have left the surgical mask at home..
273
Isaac Douglas, Crotalus
0
5