Professor Fawcett
May 08, 2012 7:58 PM
Intermediate Lesson I (3rd-5th Years) by Professor Fawcett
John Fawcett prided himself on punctuality, and demanded it of his students, but one Tuesday he walked into his Intermediate class just ahead of the first students, wishing them a hurried good morning and putting the leather case full of his papers on the desk as they took their seats. He fumbled for his roll with one hand while waving the third through fifth years toward their seats with the other, occasionally making statements about coming along now and getting in their stations and getting their things out. His eyes felt grainy, but he ignored this; it was not relevant to the lesson, and should, therefore, be left at the door.He marked the students present as they came in, and then, once their presence or absence was duly documented, straightened his glasses and looked around at the class. Good group, a good group; some of his best Aladrens were in here. So long as Miss Bennett and Miss Errant were kept apart, it was a good group. Since his usual preparations had not been made, he tapped a piece of chalk with his wand as the last students settled into their chairs and allowed the chalk to then leave his hand and hover just above the surface of the blackboard, set to take down his instructions to the class.
“Good day, class – “ he began, and heard the chalk dutifully scratching away behind him. He stopped, frowned at it, and then ended the enchantment, catching it as it fell before turning back to the class as though nothing had happened except for a slight, resigned smile. He should have left that, of course, but it was a good laugh for the class now and he would straighten it out later. “ – and I hope you are all feeling on your toes today, because we’re going to be thinking.”
He gave them a moment to groan, if they wished; he did not take that kind of thing personally. It was merely part of the experience of school, and, in his opinion, something of a pressure-valve for students. Some of the more neurotic students he’d met, across the better part of seventy years spent in one kind of school or another in some capacity, were those who always tried to seem upbeat and pleased to be there; they often, to him, came across more like burgeoning serial killers. “The magical disciplines,” he began, “as we have established before, are strongly interrelated in some ways, and one of the more major of these is that they often offer witches and wizards multiple ways to solve the same problem. A few cases of this with Potions are – “
He re-enchanted his chalk, which, for a mercy, aligned itself beneath the words Good day, class and didn’t begin writing over itself. “Color-changing charms and potions, charms and potions of invisibility or something very similar, Transfiguration spells and potions which have similar effects – you will all, of course, recall the discussion of Circe from your Beginner’s class – and potions and spells related to mood, and, of course, some of the healing potions and charms we look at.” Learning how to patch oneself up was a substantial part of the average young wizard’s education, but not for a bad reason. He did hope they had followed his speech; he knew it had not been as well-organized as it might have been.
He twitched his wand, and the chalk went to the side of the board. “Your assignment is to write an extended essay, comparing and contrasting a spell and a potion with similar effects and then analyzing situations in which each would be more useful than the other.” He expected that would occasion a few groans, too, but they should count themselves lucky; he had the Advanced class looking at the technical differences in the effects of the spells and potions. It was something he had not done until college, so he was prepared to grant them some leeway when he graded it, but not much. “The potion you write about will be the one you work on, with a partner, today. I’d recommend that our third years stick with color-change and perhaps basic transfiguration, and expect something a bit more complex from the fifth years.” He believed in giving students the freedom to experiment and even make mistakes, within limits; it encouraged growth, and they would never know until they tried. Few of them, after at least two years with him, were going to misjudge their skills too far; he never would have given the Beginners this many options, but he trusted this class a bit more. “Raise your hand if you need assistance, and, as always, behave responsibly.” All of the classes had gotten a review of proper etiquette in the Potions room, including the necessity of being polite, a few weeks ago; thankfully, he did not expect many problems of that sort in here, either, but it had seemed better to make the point.
OOC: Have fun posting in Potions! Standard site rules apply, from length and grammar to realism. Tag Fawcett if you need him.
Subthreads: What could possibly go wrong? by Katrina (Kitty) McLevy - Aladren with Sullivan Quincy, Pecari, Kitty
Time for my Specialty. by Maximilian Joshua McLachlan, Aladren with Russell Layne, Aladren, Josh McLachlan
Brainstorming out loud. by David Wilkes, Aladren with Derry Four, Teppenpaw
Oh, brother... by Arnold Carey, Aladren
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Professor Fawcett
Intermediate Lesson I (3rd-5th Years)
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Professor Fawcett
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David Wilkes, Aladren
May 14, 2012 7:17 PM
Brainstorming out loud. by David Wilkes, Aladren
Professor Fawcett wasn’t looking quite as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as usual, but David had yet to make it to a single class in time to set his desk up all day, and so, fumbling with quills and parchment and papers and stuff, he noticed nothing about his Potions teacher except the fact that the man was in the room. He’d had a slightly different perspective back in Muggle school, where they had represented the main group of individuals in the school who did not wish to beat him up on a regular basis, but at Sonora, he largely regarded the professors as beings somewhere between omnipotent but distant chessmasters and talkative pieces of furniture.The last of his things hit the desk just as the professor started talking, and David ran a hand through his dark hair, breathing a quiet sigh of relief. Safe. For another period, anyway.
He scribbled down the general idea of the instructions, trying to think of something to do. He ruled out Transfiguration potions at once, since he’d read enough to know most of those were very difficult and plus, he just didn’t like human Transfiguration, which also accounted for the example. Circe, to him, was one of the creepier figures in the kids’ version of the Odyssey he was familiar with; from what he’d picked up flipping through encyclopedias, there were many things that were much worse in Ovid, but that was why he wasn’t reading Ovid, at least not unless he became very convinced this was necessary to look smart at some point, like in college, when he’d undoubtedly have somehow become too cool to wince. Or something like that. Anyway, he knew what he didn’t want to do, which didn’t help him a lot with figuring out what he did want to do. He was pretty sure Fawcett would raise a disapproving eyebrow at him, or worse, if he went with the third year assignment….
“How do you like charms?” he asked the person sitting next to him when they were dismissed to work, completely forgetting about pleasantries like asking them to work with him and going through that dialogue before getting to the point. The bit of his mind which would have normally been given over to things like that which had nothing to do with the assignment was currently dwelling on how he was going to have an ulcer before they got to CATS, he was just sure of it. “And stupid charms or Healing charms?” He was personally inclined toward the first one, just to be different and maybe derive some entertainment from the class, but he was more brainstorming out loud than making real propositions at this point. David had a faith in his ability to talk himself to the right answer to anything, given enough time and, of course, adequate background information. For that, he had a faith in his professors, that surely they wouldn’t actually have him do something he didn’t have the knowledge to do.
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David Wilkes, Aladren
Brainstorming out loud.
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David Wilkes, Aladren
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Derry Four, Teppenpaw
May 20, 2012 2:09 PM
Should I get an umbrella? by Derry Four, Teppenpaw
Derry arrived in Potions with time to spare today. This wasn't exactly a novelty for him, but neither was it a regular occurrence. He never got there late after the first couple of days in his first year because he didn't really want to serve detention and it had started to look like Professor Fawcett was considering it if Derry didn't clean up his act, but the amount of time he had between arrival and the start of class varied widely from day to day.Today, he thought he had even seen Professor Fawcett entering the room, which was something he had never encountered before, and he'd checked his watch (an old-time pocket watch that went nicely with his colonial era outfit - he'd gotten it for Christmas and Three said it was an antique, probably not as old as their shared clothing style, but older than Grandmother anyway which was saying something) to see how early he was.
It wasn't early enough that he felt comfortable heading off to do something else during the intervening time, so he just headed into the classroom, greeted the professor and the other early birds, and took a seat. Derry wasn't much of a creature of habit so he didn't have a seat that he usually chose, and today he had a wider selection than he normally did. He picked one at random, going mostly by the direction Professor Fawcett's hand had waved when he'd dallied too long at the front of the room and was urged to move on to his station.
He got his things out and set up and even had time to check his syllabus to see what they'd be working on today. No specific potion was mentioned, though, so his check over his ingredient levels was more general than focused to what he'd be using today. He was almost completely out of scarab beetles and doxy eggs, but he didn't think he should go fetch more from the classroom supplies until he knew he'd need them.
He was still contemplating what else he should ask his mom to resupply for him when he wrote his next letter home when David Wilkes sat down next to him. "Hey," he greeted, easily abandoning his inventory in favor of something more social. But David had barely gotten his things settled when Professor Fawcett started the lesson, so conversation would have to wait.
The project sounded a little daunting, and for that reason, he was kind of glad an Aladren had landed in the seat next to his. He could generally handle brewing well enough, but when thinking was involved, he preferred to have help. He was always better at practical work than theoretical, regardless of subject. He understood how magic worked, but mostly in an instinctive way that was almost impossible to put into words. For some reason, though, Professors didn't seem to accept "Because that's the way it is" as an explanation for why something behaved the way it did.
When the lecture ended, David apparently accepted Derry's earlier 'Hey' as a contract to work together because he started right off with a query about Derry's Charms skills. "Uh," he began, not quite sure how much detail David was looking for, so he kept his answer to the main two points that might be relevant. "I'm really good with casting charms and really bad with writing essays about them."
He blinked a little, though, and was somewhat taken aback at the categories David broke Charms into. "I, um, I don't know a super lot about healing charms, just that one unit, so I guess the stupid ones would be better?"
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Derry Four, Teppenpaw
Should I get an umbrella?
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Derry Four, Teppenpaw
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David
May 21, 2012 3:22 PM
How about a great big multicolored one? by David
David nodded in approval as Derry said he was good at casting Charms, but not writing about them. That worked well enough, he thought, for this class period anyway, since David would write his own essay and he wasn’t completely sure how much they were going to be using the charms instead of just talking about them. He ranked himself as someone who was ‘pretty good’ at magic rather than ‘really good,’ though, so having a partner who ranked himself as ‘really good’ was good in case someone did have to take out a wand.He did think, though, in retrospect that he should have been a little clearer in his word choice when he defined categories of charms, since he’d left out those which were neither stupid nor medical, which had probably left Derry thinking he was one of Those Kind of future doctor-Healer types when he really figured he was almost as unlikely to do anything even tangentially related to that as he was to follow in any of his dad’s various occupational footsteps, but it was too late to change the sentence now. So he just left it there.
“Got any ideas, then?” he asked. “I’m good with anything except Transfiguration. I’m sure there's something fun, you know, we could come up with – plus everyone’s going to do Healing, I’m pretty sure – but I can’t think of it.” He hated how that happened, sometimes; another time, when it wasn’t practically the assignment, he’d be able to think of any number of weird things to do with Charms and Potions that might get him in detention, or at least the hospital wing, if he tried it and wasn’t very, very careful about trying it, but now that he needed to, his mind was a blank.
So it went, though. He guessed he’d have to make do, and be glad when things did go right, because getting too upset about it wasn’t going to work. When he got flustered, David usually found that while his mind might speed up, it rarely did so in a productive way. He had to be pretty neutral-feeling to really think; if he was happy or annoyed or anything else, he couldn’t concentrate that well. Well, well for him, anyway. He wasn’t sure he ever did anything that could reasonably be said to constitute concentrating well except when he was off doing random experiments or other things that had no bearing on his education and were purely for his own entertainment.
“Except the color-changing thing,” he added, catching sight of an ingredient in his potions kit that reminded him of that. “But I’m not sure that Fawcett would really be all that impressed if we did that one.” Not that he wouldn’t try it, of course, if Derry couldn’t think of anything better. He couldn’t lose that many points if it was done correctly, and was, after all, working with a partner who was in a lower year. Fourth year, sure, but that counted in his book, even if many of the fourth years were sort of scary.
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David
How about a great big multicolored one?
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David
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