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.
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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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Arnold Carey, Aladren
May 17, 2012 8:39 PM
Oh, brother... by Arnold Carey, Aladren
Maybe it was in part because it was his Head of House’s class, and that added more pressure, or maybe it was in spite of it, since he really had no objection to Professor Fawcett and had never been treated poorly by the man even after last year’s Quidditch final, but Potions was definitely not Arnold Carey’s favorite subject, at least when he thought about it. When he was actually working on a potion and Fawcett was neither right in front of him or hovering behind him, he could find a rhythm in it and do well, especially when he was feeling the pressure of the clock rather than the pressure to overachieve because he was a Carey and an Aladren, but just thinking of the detailed, fussy work and – worse – the written papers was off-putting. The concept just about defeated the pleasure he drew from actual successes in the classroom.His greeting to the professor, then, was cheerful and polite, but he didn’t hurry to get to class early, he didn’t sit at the front, and he was not really looking forward to what the syllabus told him was in store for them. Getting into the theoretical things, and the this-versus-that’s, of magic was just not one of Arnold’s strengths; why one thing was better to use than another was usually a matter of either what worked better for the purpose or what he had time to get together, sometimes with a little intuition thrown in, but there was nothing complex about it, and he didn’t really care why a spell or potion worked so long as it did. He could, when they studied on Saturday, rattle off the long lists of recipes and ingredients and properties that his brother drew up for him or stole from books without – much – difficulty, but a good deal of the Saturday sessions consisted of Arthur explaining concepts to him. He sometimes felt guilty about that, even though Arthur insisted that having to teach the material over to Arnold helped him know it better himself.
Hearing what they were doing made him glance at his brother, who almost immediately glanced at him, too, and they shared a brief, if not exactly overjoyed, smile. Saturday was, Arnold very much suspected, going to be a long day for him. An evening or two before that might go on for a while, too. So long as he passed the assignment in the end, though.
First, though, before he could even think of any of that, he had to figure out where to start with all of this. That was a pre-condition for passing, usually, and today didn’t seem to be one of the exceptions he thought might exist sometimes if you worked with Arthur, which he generally didn’t; they both knew how their mother found it a bit unsettling that they were as close as they were, and it had seemed better, by mutual, unspoken agreement, not to unsettle their classmates as well once they began school. Plus, they were in the same dorm, which meant they already spent enough time together to get on each other’s nerves, and if they always worked together in classes, it was a sure thing that it would eventually not go well.
Still, Arthur wasn’t the only person in the room who was better at knowing what he wanted to do with open-ended lessons than Arnold was. He turned to the nearest open student, hoping that one was one. “So, do you have any ideas about what to do with this?” he asked, his fingers discreetly crossed for a ‘yes’.
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Arnold Carey, Aladren
Oh, brother...
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Arnold Carey, Aladren
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