Worries on Defense Against the Dark Arts

Tabitha Hawthorne

May 20, 2018 4:26 AM

Advanced - The Patronus Charm by Tabitha Hawthorne

Selina had to say that things were looking up, slightly. It had been confirmed that illness going around was a one time sort of thing, rather like Dragon Pox - once someone had had it once, they were not going to catch it again. That meant those who had already been ill were now free to move in and out of the quarantine. That meant she could let Tarquin and Daniel return to living off campus, and - having confirmed that she’d been through the illness already - invite their new Defence Professor, Tabitha Hawthorne, to come and join them. She had given Professor Hawthorne a tour of the school, and a couple of days to talk to her predecessor, observe his classes, and go over the curriculum together so that there was a smooth transition for the students, and so that the new teacher got a chance to ask anything she needed to know. She had also explained that the interview question about half-veela had been anything but hypothetical, although she’d left it to Daniel to discuss how he was dealing with it. Luckily, Tabitha didn’t have to face that particular issue in her first class, as she was going to be meeting the advanced students first. An intimidating prospect in some senses, but they did have the advantages of all wanting to be there, having actively chosen the class, and they also seemed to currently have fewer cases of accidental magic, as well as generally having themselves more under control than the younger students.

Tabitha ran a hand through her short hair, pushing the strands away from her face. Today, in just a few minutes, her first class of her brand new teaching career would be walking in through the doors at the back of the classroom. She had hoped for something a little easier, some small first years who were probably just as new as she was. She had no such luck, though. Her first class would be with the oldest years in the school and suffice to say, she was feeling a bit ill. She was standing against her new desk and slouched slightly, her fingers pressing into the smooth wood, tense. She had to relax.

She glanced to her right, where the previous DADA professor Daniel Nash was sitting in order to observe and gave a weak smile. He’d been a great help to her, the pair having discussed the curriculum he’d been teaching to the students and having passed her plenty of advice and information to help her survive her first teaching experience. Now, it was mostly up to her.

The doors at the back of the classroom opened, signalling the arrival of her students and she straightened. She could not give the appearance of nerves or they’d eat her alive. She watched quietly as they filed in and took their seats, ready for her to teach them. She gave one last look at Daniel before clearing her throat and addressing them.

“Good morning, class,” she smiled at them, taking in a few of their faces. She flicked her wand towards the chalk so it rose to write her name on the blackboard. “I am Professor Tabitha Hawthorne, your new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, quite obviously.”

“Today, we’re going to be dealing with some very advanced magic, the Patronus charm. This spell, in order to work properly and powerfully, requires full access to your emotions. Specifically, your happiest ones, your happiest memories, your thoughts. It is for this reason why it is considered one of the hardest spells to learn and cast as it is often needed when you are in danger. A patronus can take two forms, a non-corporeal one which is no more than just vapour or a mist and a corporeal one, one which takes the physical form of an animal. The animal is a reflection of a person’s innermost personality, their very soul even... So everybody’s corporeal patronus will be different.”

Tabitha could hear the chalk scribbling down notes on the board behind her and she felt much more confident in herself. Defence was something she knew, something she was comfortable in. She was starting to feel more relaxed as she continued on.

“It is an effective repellent against Dementors and Lethifolds and, the corporeal patronuses, can be used to send messages or warnings to other wizards and in that instance, it is possible to cast more than one at the same time. The incantation and wand movement are both simple but, as you will discover, success in casting the spell is very, very difficult.”

“The incantation is Expecto Patronum and the movement of your wand is only a circular one that you can do more than once to build the power. I shall demonstrate and then, it will be your turn.”

She gave a grin to the students, looking almost excited at the prospect of the students having a crack at the spell. She raised her wand and moved it in three smooth circles while repeating the very incantation she’d just told the students to use. From the tip of her wand, vapour spurted and formed a shield in front of her, rippling in the air. After a few seconds, she let it dissipate and smiled again.

“And that, class, is what I would like you to aim for. A non-corporeal shield. Remember, you need your happiest memories, your happiest thoughts. You will need room so let’s move the desks and chairs to one side and then spread out!”

As the scraping sound of desks and chairs filled the room, she moved over to where Daniel was. Keeping her eyes on the students, she whispered to him, “So, how am I doing?”

OOC - first paragraph written by Selina, the rest by Tabitha, with permission for god-modding of Daniel. Usual class rules apply - 200 words minimum, but the more detailed your response is, the higher you will score. Please tag Tabitha in the subject line if anything is occurring that would need her to intervene.

Subthreads:

Thinking happy thoughts by Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw with Ben Pierce

Insights by Professor Daniel Nash

Worries by Kira Spaulding, Crotalus

20 Tabitha Hawthorne Advanced - The Patronus Charm 1417 Tabitha Hawthorne 1 5

Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw

May 22, 2018 9:51 AM

Thinking happy thoughts by Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw

Sometimes, a new teacher was a good thing. Raine’s first year had probably been the worst of her academic career, as she adjusted to the strange variety of rules and expectations that formal schooling brought with it. Prior to attending Sonora, she had been homeschooled (in the very loosest sense of the term ‘schooled’) and it had been a big adjustment. She had been quite glad when professors who had seen that side of her were replaced with people upon whom she could make a fresh, not quite so terrible impression. But now… She knew she wasn’t a model student, not by far, but most of the existing professors knew how hard she’d worked to get where she was. She found it hard to shake her doubts that they disliked her, or found her irritatingly stupid, or wished they didn’t have to struggle through marking her poorly written essays or - worst of all - just wished she would ‘try harder,’ assuming that that would sort it all out, when she was already constantly trying to the maximum degree she was capable of. But…. but they knew her. They knew she had worked her way up to this point. And now there was a new person, and what was she going to see? She was going to see the badly spelled homework. She would only see Raine as the girl with the lowest grade in the class. If she bothered to look into Raine’s file, she might see that she had got an ‘Acceptable’ on her Defence Against the Dark Arts CATS, just squeaking a pass into this class. Assuming that this teacher accepted ‘acceptable’. What if she didn’t? New, at this stage, was not good. New was scary. However unintimidating Professor Hawthorne looked as a person, Raine couldn’t help but worry.

She listened to the lecture, though some of the words sounded technical and hard to spell. What was non-kore-por-real? The fact that Professor Hawthorne explained it in simple terms didn’t make the word less intimidating because someone was bound to expect her to remember it and spell it right in an essay at some point. It wasn’t fair - even if you knew things, and could explain them good, it didn’t ever seem to matter unless you used the fancy words for them. She seemed to be the only one who thought it mattered more that you could explain it good and clear so that people understood you. Everyone else wanted to know that you knew the name for it.

As the practical part of the class began, the furniture began moving around, and Raine took the time that the room was arranging itself to try to do the same with her thoughts. At least it was a practical class. She was quite good at practical classes (actually, she often excelled at them, but when it came to school work, Raine was rarely willing to award herself anything above ‘quite good’). She might manage to do okay at the spell. It was definitely better than theory. And it relied on emotional intelligence, in a sense, which she knew she had. But it relied on happiness… If she had been asked to pick who, out of her and her twin, would do better with a spell that required a person to be in tune with their emotions, she would easily have picked herself over Kyte. He was - much as she loved him - basically useless at that. Everything slid off him like water off a duck’s back, and he never understood how other people were feeling (particularly when that person was her, and she was embarrassed or shy about something). But he was a happy person. He laughed easily, he was almost always in a good mood.

She shuffled her feet, looking at her shoes and trying to think. It seemed like a deep focus kind of class, and so hopefully giving herself some thinking time wasn’t going to be marked down as too odd. Happy times. She was happy when she was performing with her family’s circus, but she wasn’t sure she could think of anything specific. It was more… a general warm sort of fuzziness that she felt when she thought about home. There had been her first boyfriend, Dallas. He had definitely made her happy but in ways she wasn’t entirely comfortable thinking about in the middle of class. And anyway, they’d broken up at the end of that summer… It had always been what they’d agreed, but still, it had made her sad to have to leave him… There was the moment when she had got her CATS results. And when she’d told Professor Xavier about them. It was funny… She wouldn’t have thought school would be the place she looked for her happiest memory, but that was probably the biggest achievement of her life. She tried to push aside how she thought the new professor might feel about her and just think about that moment, when it had felt like there was a big balloon inside her chest, and that it was swelling up so big that it would burst unless she could share how she was feeling with someone else. But not just anyone. It had to be someone special, who would understand the full power of what she was feeling. And she had had been able to share it with Professor Xavier - she had been able to trust him with the special balloon feeling, which was so big that it had to be shared but which couldn’t just be let out anywhere, because he really, really understood just how important it was and what it meant to her. And she thought about Professor Xavier, and how he had said ‘I’m so proud of you, Raine. She could play it back, in his voice, exactly how he had said it. Those words were etched on her memory forever. ‘I’m so proud of you, Raine.

“Expecto Patronum,” she cast. A little ripple of silver emitted from her wand, hanging in the air for a second before falling away. She glanced around to see how her classmates were doing, and whether that was good or not.

13 Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw Thinking happy thoughts 327 Raine Collindale, Teppenpaw 0 5

Professor Daniel Nash

May 24, 2018 4:29 PM

Insights by Professor Daniel Nash

On the last day of August, Daniel would have been mildly disappointed if Headmaster Mortimer or Deputy Headmistress Skies told him they had found a permanent professor and his services were no longer needed. A few weeks ago, however, when the Deputy Headmistress told him she had interviewed a candidate for the position and she looked promising, Daniel had done a little dance (after Selina left, of course) and treated himself a nice dinner at an upscale restaurant in LA (as soon as he was allowed to leave the school premises) in celebration.

Admittedly, half the celebration was for his restored freedom to come and go, but the opening to leave permanently was definitely more welcome than not after the past few months. He had spent far too much time trapped among teenagers and leaving for good was certainly looking more and more appealing, even without another job to go to.

Of course, he hadn’t escaped entirely, yet. They were still keeping him on as substitute back-up to help out Isis while the disease worked its way through the staff, particularly since the school was temporarily down a potions professor while Sophie stayed safe with her young family. But once Tabitha was settled into her new position, he’d have more free time, less lesson planning, less grading, and most ideally, if he could convince Isis to give him mostly Advanced classes to cover, fewer dealings with both Cleo and Jasmine.

It wasn’t that he disliked either girl. Well, that was perhaps slightly untrue in both cases. It he wasn’t related to the one, he doubted he would particularly like Jasmine, especially after being her teacher. As it was, their relationship could only improve again once he stopped reading her essays. Cleo, by accident of birth, had forced herself out anonymous mediocrity and into awkwardness, and he would be glad to leave that in Tabitha Hawthorne’s hands. He had no desire to deal with teenaged girls and their problems any more than he absolutely had to, even if Cleo’s were a bit more remarkable than most of her peers’. It wasn’t that she was half-veela that bothered him. It was that she had already come to visit his office hours once and it wasn’t to argue about or improve her grades (which were entirely unremarkable - a far greater failing in Daniel’s opinion than any genetic accident she might be cursed with through no fault of her own) but rather to ask him about his regard toward her feelings.

Really, he was very glad Tabitha was taking over. He could polish off his resumé and start interviewing for the kinds of university professorships he’d been hoping to find when he first when back to school for a teaching degree. Sonora was cursed with the absolutely worst age range to deal with. When they were younger, they were at least cute. When they were older, they might have actually developed something close to intelligence. The sooner he found the job he really wanted and got out of here for good, the better.

As the advanced DADA class began to trickle in, he eyed the seventh and sixth years as if to gauge them for the qualities he hoped to find in university students not much older than them. Maturity and intelligence was beginning to peak through in some them, but by no means all.

Raine and Kyte - well, they wouldn’t go to a university so he’d be safe from them. Raine at least tried, he’d give her that, but that didn’t make her essays any less difficult to slog through. Obviously even the Collindales had to take some kind of RATS courses, and he’d just got unlucky, he supposed, that they did marginally better in his class than the others. Arguably, he could preen over the fact that he’d been the only professor in the school able to beat enough information into Kyte’s head for him to pull an Acceptable in his subject, but then he’d have to admit that by not doing so, the other teachers had been able to spare themselves Kyte’s presence in their theory lessons which perhaps displayed the greater wisdom.

He had already warned Tabitha that she ought to have brandy on hand when she read his homework or test papers. Raine’s were hard to read. Kyte’s were painful, littered as they were with Bad Science, made up facts, and plagiarized bits from other students.

Then there was Ben Pierce, best friend and roommate to Kyte. Ben was not half as bad as Kyte, thank Merlin, and perhaps at least as much to blame for Kyte’s passing grade as Daniel, but he was still a Pecari and probably complicit in Kyte’s plagiarism of his papers. His kind frustrated Daniel far more than people like Raine. Ben was smart. He could have excelled, but he didn’t put forth the effort to do so. He coasted through with a steady E. Daniel figured he might get some of kids like that at the college level but Ben’s papers at least didn’t make him mutter under his breath as he tried to decipher the bad spelling or go for the alcohol because he needed to dull the pain inflicted to his brain by the theories on offer. So he wasn’t all bad.

Ingrid was a bit like Ben. Also a Pecari. Also more interested in other things than getting her homework perfect, though he thought she probably could if she just tried harder. But at least she didn’t have Kyte frequently distracting her from Daniel’s lectures, nor were any of her papers suspiciously similar to any of her friends’.

Fabian was about the same. No trouble, really, not even as bad as most Pecaris Daniel knew, and his essays were almost good. A couple of Fabians and Ingrids in his future classes wouldn’t be the end of the world, he supposed. If the Head Boy and Girl had to be Pecaris, they weren’t bad choices.

Wu was just quiet. If she had problems with the English language, they were not reflected in her written assignments, which were clearly written and well focused. He would not go so far as to say she was a pleasure to have in class - she was too easily overlooked to invoke pleasure at her presence- but he had no trouble seeing her in a college setting and doing well there.

Nevaeh likewise did her work and never caused him any problems, though being blind, he did need to put it a little extra effort so nothing was ever entirely dependent on visual cues. Also, some extra safety measures had to be taken on account of the seeing eye dog, whenever the class was throwing around curses or had a dangerous creature on display. But she worked hard enough that he never begrudged the extra work necessary so that she could take part. She was an actual pleasure to have in class, and he hoped his future college students would be a lot like her.

Natasha was good student, and a fine Aladren. If he could have a classroom full of Natashas in his next job, that would be the closest thing to occupational heaven as he could imagine.

Louis, like Natasha, was a fine example of an Aladren. The Frenchman was perhaps a bit too focussed on his life outside the classroom for Daniel’s taste, but he turned in good work most of the time, when his family obligations weren’t too demanding.

Kira was very talented, especially with her wand work. It was satisfying to see students excel with their work like Kira did. He’d be glad if he got some people like her, too.

Joe was a good student as well, usually turning in well thought out essays, and contributing productively to classroom discussions. He was also the only advanced student to have come down with the fever that had quarantined the school, and had somehow miraculously managed not to infect any of his peers.

To Daniel’s knowledge, the advanced class continued to be otherwise spared the ravages of the school’s plague, and most of the advanced students were pretty well behaved normally, so he wasn’t really expecting any major shenanigans during Tabitha’s first class. Aside from Kyte, they were a good group to start with.

She seemed a bit nervous as she began, but they’d gone over the curriculum and he had pointed out the key points the students may get tested on in their RATS, and she quickly fell into a rhythm on her own without any more than raised eyebrows as encouragement. She knew what she was doing. They’d talked about it enough. And now it was her time to fly out of the nest.

She did fine. He couldn’t help but think that he would have talked more before having the students attempt to make their own Patronuses, but he knew he was occasionally prone to over-explanation, so it was possible she might have said enough to get her lesson across.

She came over to where he was observing to do her own observing (it was a good spot to see most of the room, which was why he had picked it) and asked what he thought of her performance. Not one to hold back criticism, he said, keeping his voice down to keep the conversation private, “You started a little shaky. It’s best to not show any nerves if you can help it. Paste on a confident smile before they come and keep it up until it becomes real. After you got going, you did fine, though. I like to repeat the important parts a couple times to reduce the chances that someone dropped their pencil or absolutely had to tie their shoe right that second or somehow otherwise got distracted during just that part and missed a key point. But that may just be a teaching style difference.”

He looked out more toward the class than at Tabitha, partly due to the compulsive vigilance instilled after months of dealing with unexpected accidental magic in the younger years, but partly to see how the students that had been his for two years now were doing with the spell. “Oh,” he said in mild surprise as a small sliver of silver came out of Raine’s wand on her first try, “Good for Raine,” he commented. “That Teppenpaw who just managed a ribbon,” he added to Tabitha, with a discreet chin point to indicate which student he was talking about, “She tries hard, but really struggles with theory and written assignments. She’s normally good at practical application, but I wasn’t sure if she had the happiness necessary for this one. She usually seems rather anxious most of time in class.”

His chin moved, indicating her brother. “And that’s Kyte,” he added, because that kid was the one advanced student that absolutely required close monitoring, “He’s the one I told you about,” he added.

Ooc: Welcome Tabitha! Also, as a note regarding his analysis of the students, Daniel was an Aladren during his Sonora days, and he does harbor a strong bias for Aladrens and against Pecaris; he is fully aware he has a bias, but he doesn’t realize it’s as bad or as obvious as it is.

1 Professor Daniel Nash Insights 130 Professor Daniel Nash 0 5

Ben Pierce

May 31, 2018 11:37 AM

I hope I don’t stink at this by Ben Pierce

Ben Pierce entered the Defense room with seconds to spare before he would have official earned the title ‘late’. He slipped into the nearest empty seat, still breathing a little hard from running the whole way from the Quidditch pitch. There really hadn’t been enough time for a quick fly between the end of potions and the start of DADA, but he really needed the fresh air after the stink his potion had made this morning. He could only assume one of his ingredient stocks had gone bad, because he didn’t think he’d done anything that wrong with his brewing. But ho-boy had it smelled bad.

The quick fly had done him and his clothes good. There was only a little hint of stink left hanging off him, and his nose had mostly acclimated to that already. A shower and change of clothes probably would have been better, for the sake of his classmates, but Pecari was even more out of the way than the pitch was, and a few loop de loops could be done faster that the amount of shampooing and lathering he thought he really needed. So that was going to have to wait until the longer lunch break.

Ben gave Raine an apologetic smile as he realized his seat was next to hers. “Sorry if I stink. Potions accident last class,” he explained in a low whisper as the new teacher introduced herself again. She’d been observing before so he already knew who she was, but it looked like she was transitioning to Speaking Professor while Professor Nash was the one doing the observing now. Cool. Professor Nash was too a harsh grader, in Ben’s opinion, and he’d be glad to try his luck with the new person. He might move up from merely Acceptable to Exceeds Expectations, and his mom would like that. Professor Nash’s Expectations seemed awfully high.

The spell under discussion seemed interesting, from what he was able to hear of it over Kyte’s chatter. His best friend was sitting in the seat behind him, which meant Ben was in a bad position to kick him into quiet, and telling him to be quiet meant Ben had to turn around and miss parts of the lecture while Ben himself was talking, trying to shush Kyte.

He thought he caught most of the gist anyway. Happy thoughts and a wind-up. Got it. Seemed easy enough.

He had almost all good memories, so he didn’t really foresee too much trouble. He was a happy guy, he had a happy family (mostly, anyway; ‘happy’ wasn’t really the first word to come to mind when he thought of Aunt Bel, and it was generally best to just forget the times that Gramelia turned him into a frog, but other than that he really didn’t have any complaints about his relatives, at least those in the Boston branch, which were the only ones he really counted anyway), and he had a terrific girlfriend, excellent friends, and he played on great sports teams who did more winning than losing most of the time, so Ben had no shortage of good times to draw upon.

He thought he’d maybe start with Tess saying yes to being his girlfriend, so he circled his wand around in a good windup, then snapped it forward, casting, “Expecto Patronum!” as he thought about Tess and how she looked in her pajamas and . . . how he accidentally asked her to marry him.

Nothing came out of his wand.

Right, well, maybe a slightly less awkward and embarrassing moment then. Something that had all those good feelings, without the drawbacks of that particular incident.

Next to him, Raine pulled off a little ripple of silver, and he grinned at her. “Awesome, Raine!” he complimented, holding up his non-wand hand for a high five. “I’m still trying to get anything out of mine.”

1 Ben Pierce I hope I don’t stink at this 339 Ben Pierce 0 5

Kira Spaulding, Crotalus

June 07, 2018 2:25 PM

Worries by Kira Spaulding, Crotalus

Kira had been supremely irritated about the Quarantine. She might not have minded any other time, but shortly before Midterm-could she still call it that if they didn't go anywhere? There hadn't been any classes-she had received a letter from Ned saying he wanted to talk to her about something over the break and it wasn't something he wanted to say in a letter.

She couldn't help but be worried. Things had seemed really good between them and she had thought maybe, just maybe Ned actually liked her but Kira generally expected the worst. Probably he was betrothed to someone else and wanted to let her down generally. And then he'd marry this wonderful person-someone whom Kira assumed was a lot like Kelsey, perfect in every way, the ideal society woman-and even in the unlikely event that Ned liked her now he'd soon fall in love with this Kelsey-like person. Because everyone liked Kelsey better than Kira-except Fabian and Natalie, she guessed-it reasoned that he'd prefer someone similar to Kelsey to her.

Of course, when Kira had mentioned this to Fabian, he'd told her in the nicest possible way that she was most likely completely wrong, that Ned had never shown all that much interest in Kelsey before so why would he be interested in someone like her? Which was true, she supposed, but that didn't keep her from worrying. Or maybe that Ned had gotten betrothed to someone who was not like Kelsey. It didn't matter, because he'd still be betrothed to someone else and she'd still be screwed.

She sighed to herself as she sat down in her chair for Defense noting the new professor. It didn't really matter to Kira as she was graduating. And she was really ready to get out of here. Most of her friends had graduated so she really didn't have anyone besides her family and Winston to hang out with much.

At the very least, Kira hoped the new professor wasn't as harsh a grader as Professor Nash. Any sort of subjective assignment felt her with dread as it was, even with easier graders, unleashing feelings of terrible inadequacy even if she did better than Fabian. Not that most things didn't unleash feelings of terrible inadequacy. She tried to make up for it with wand work.

Professor Hawthorne gave them the assignment and she felt uneasy. Normally Kira would feel she could handle a a difficult bit of wandwork without issues, but this....involved thinking happy thoughts. Happy memories. She wasn't sure she had many.

Okay, meeting Ned made her happy but now that was tinged with worries about the current status of things. Spending time with him since then had made her happy too. And not just time with him but time with all her friends and family. Not to mention her success with magic. That was as satisfying as everything else.

She was ready. " Expecto Patronum " The Crotalus made the circular motion with her wand. White mist poured out of it. Kira could just make out an elongated shape going off the shield.

11 Kira Spaulding, Crotalus Worries 320 Kira Spaulding, Crotalus 0 5

Raine

June 10, 2018 12:10 AM

Perhaps a little, but it'll be ok by Raine

Raine was fairly used to stinky teenage boys. After all, she had a twin brother. To be fair to Kyte, their circus training was a sweaty business, and she could understand why he smelt bad after their workouts (she probably did too), but he seemed to manage to carry a perpetual air of vague grossness with him at all times. Not to mention the other kinds of stink that boys let off, without seeming to care who was in the vicinity. The air Ben carried in with him was slightly different (though closer to the second type of smell than the first…). It was definitely noticeable and not nice, but it wasn’t beyond anything she could deal with.

“S’ok,” she just had time to whisper before class began.

She focussed on her own spell, trying to block out what other people were doing. But she relaxed a bit after her first attempt, tuning back in to Ben and everyone else.

“Thank you,” she smiled, reaching up to complete the high five that was offered, with an almost sheepish smile on her face, and a slight blush. She appreciated the compliment, and the encouragement, but it still felt very foreign to her to have anything she did in class be deemed ‘awesome.’

“Oh,” she floundered, when Ben said he hadn’t managed to do anything yet. “I-I’m sure you can - you’ll get it soon,” she stumbled slightly over her words. It was even less often that she was the one who could do something that others couldn’t (or at least, it had always felt that way to her). That was a situation she really didn’t know how to handle - she wasn’t always the best at getting her words together even with familiar situations. She was a bit surprised that Ben hadn’t managed it, and that she had, because he seemed like so much happier a person than she was. Not that she thought of herself as miserable. She wasn’t. She was generally… sort of fine, or quietly contented. At least when she wasn’t worried about schoolwork, and training, which admittedly, was a lot - she was rather good at worrying. But Ben had that… obvious, wear-it-on-your-sleeve outgoing happiness. Maybe though, that was the trouble. If you were always happy, perhaps you couldn’t pick out a moment of really focussed, intense happiness. Those kinds of moments that made you want to yell and punch the air, and wear a huge smile for everyone to see. Kyte could be like that over finding out there was something particularly enjoyable for lunch, and Ben was sort of similar to him. Of course, she was sure Ben and Kyte both had memories of things that were even happier, but it was like… It was like searching for the light of a candle in the daytime. Their day to day feelings were so much happier, so much brighter that the truly happiest of happy moments still shone for them, but were perhaps harder to notice because there was less of a contrast. For Raine, those moments came so much more rarely that they stood out all the brighter for it.

13 Raine Perhaps a little, but it'll be ok 327 Raine 0 5

Ben, Pecari

June 12, 2018 1:37 PM

practice makes perfect by Ben, Pecari

He smiled apologetically again as Raine was all Teppish and said his stink was tolerable. Or, at least, that was how he was interpreting her response. No help for it anyway right now anyway.

“Oh, I’ll get it,” he said confidently when Raine seemed concerned and unduly supportive after his initial failure. He smiled reassuringly at her. “My first good memory pick just wasn’t quite the best one for this. I mean, it turned out great and everything, and I’m super glad it happened since it lead to a lot of awesomeness, but it was actually kind of awkward taken by itself.” Ben shrugged, unconcerned. “Memory is weird, isn’t it? You remember a moment as being fabulous because of everything it led to, but when you think on it too close, you realize that actual moment itself was really more than a little stressful and maybe just a little awful even. Still amazing for your long term happiness, of course, and an important turning point, but not always so great for patronus creation.”

“Let’s see,” he mumbled, more to himself than to Raine as he re-examined his memory, looking for something that was actually totally awesome in its own right. Maybe something lighter. Sports club, maybe? That was awesome. Except Sports Club made him think of Gabe and he missed Gabe still. So maybe not Sports Club.

Also, the potions stink seemed to be getting worse again. He cast a quick air freshener charm, that he remembered about after reviewing his Sports Club memories. It wasn’t quite as effective against magical stink as it was for natural sweat, but it helped. And the faint floral scent now surrounding him, as it tried to mask the alchemical odor, also called to mind his bag of Quidditch gear, which was another place he used that charm a lot.

Winning Quidditch could work, he thought, returning to his consideration of potential patronus memories. That was a solid uncomplicated moment and the thrill of victory should not be underestimated. “Let’s try winning the Quidditch cup for 200, Alex,” he said, out loud, to focus himself. It didn’t occur to him that this might confuse Raine because he was barely aware he was verbalizing the thought out loud at all.

“Expecto Patronum!” he cast with a good strong wind-up before pitching the incantation.

The feeling of jubilation he had felt seeing the golden snitch gripped between Jamie’s fingers filled him and flew out through his wand, providing a faint silvery mist in front of him. It didn’t look like a very substantial shield by any means, but it was a good start, he thought.

He grinned over at Raine, pleased with his improvement. “Practice makes perfect,” he declared, even though his mist was still a far cry from ‘perfect’. He’d get there, he was sure. It was just a matter of time and effort.

1 Ben, Pecari practice makes perfect 339 Ben, Pecari 0 5

Raine

June 17, 2018 7:33 AM

It sure does by Raine

Right. Ben seemed fine. Of course he was fine, and he didn’t need a pep talk from her. Silly to think that had been a possibility. She just sort of nodded along as he rambled about memory, because he seemed to just be verbalising his thought process rather than seeking her opinion. She wasn’t sure why some people were like this - why they couldn’t think inside their own heads, or perhaps preferred to think out loud, but she knew that was how they were. Thinking aloud seemed a very dangerous business to her - your thoughts tended to go down all kinds of stupid dead ends or self-contradictions before they got to where they wanted to be, and she didn’t really want to embarrass herself by having those happen out loud, where other people would witness them. Not that Ben or Kyte ever really seemed embarrassed if their thoughts ran away with them this way…

She had no idea what winning a Quidditch up ‘for two hundred, Alex’ meant but she didn’t want to disrupt Ben’s focus, so she returned to her own happy place. She took a moment to gather her focus again, although that was part of magic that came easily to her - it was like a performance, and you just switched to blocking out everything else that had been happening or that might distract you. Her patronus was much the same as before, but Ben got something to happen this time.

“Nice,” she smiled at him.

13 Raine It sure does 327 Raine 0 5