Danielle Holland
December 08, 2011 6:53 PM
Substitute Lesson [3rd-5th Years] by Danielle Holland
In the years since she graduated from Sapienti University, Danielle Holland had build a solid small business that provided tutoring services to magical and muggle students alike. She kept her muggle efforts limited mostly to pre-calculus math and reading/writing basics, since she hadn't attended muggle schooling since she finished elementary school and moved on to Salem Institute of Magicals Arts, but she'd gotten Kris to pass math during his high school years, and if she could teach Kris, she could teach anyone. Most of her clients, though, were magical. That was what most of her education and her college degree had been in, and the magical world simply had more demand for paid tutors.Demand spiked, of course, during the summer and winter breaks, when the magical boarding schools, which held the vast majority the 11-17 age demographic captive for most of the year, let out and the parents of underacheivers felt they should do something about boosting their child's academic performance. In the meantime, she had a small but solid pool of clients who were either muggles, squibs, home-schooled, or younger than eleven. To supplement that, she also put her name in for substitute teaching on days when she didn't have any other apppointments.
That was how the twenty-nine year old came to be standing in front of Lilac Crosby's Intermediate Transfiguration class at Sonora Academy of Magic. She did not present a particularly impressive picture for the group of third to fifth years. Her mousy brown hair was brushed neatly but cut in a style that was as unremarkable as its color, falling blandly to her her shoulders with just enough curl so it didn't stand out as straight, but straight enough that it did not come across as particularly curly either. Her face was a plain collection of features that were not unpleasant to look at but which certainly would not often be described as beautiful. Her eyes were a muted color that wasn't quite grey, green, brown, or blue. She called it hazel mostly because nobody had ever been able to satisfactorily describe what hazel looked like to her and she likewise couldn't describe what color her eyes were. Her teaching robes were in good repair but they were a dull green that seemed determined to make her fade into the background. Her height was unremarkable as well; she measured just around average height for a witch, and though she was more notably skinny than was the norm, her robes hid that under their folds more than adequately.
Behind her, large neat letters identified her to the class with the words, Substitute Professor Holland. Most of her tutoring students called her simply "Miss Holland" so she felt this was something of a promotion from her usual job. Despite the title, and even the higher hourly rate she was getting paid, she had no inclination to make it a more permanent arrangement. She preferred teaching one-on-one, and this intermediate class was one of the largest she had faced yet. She took a calming breath, trying to tamp down the fear of public speaking that had plagued her most of her life, and reminded herself that the right to stand here today was the reason she had paid large sums of money to Sapienti University.
"Professor Crosby couldn't make it to class today, so I will be your substitute professor for the day," she informed them, once the class's appointed hour had come. She went to close the door, allowing one last student to dodge through and take a seat, and then shut it as a visible symbol that class had begun. She returned to the teacher's desk where she had left the class roster, and began to take attendence. The first seven letters of the alphabet passed without incident. Some names she recognized from her tutoring, and those who weren't actually her students were given perhaps a slightly longer study than the children with completely unfamiliar names as she tried to find similarities to the child of the same surname she did know, but it wasn't until the later half of the Hs that she came to a stuttering halt.
"Hol-holland," she stumbled over her own surname, surprised to find it on the list. She shouldn't have been. Holland wasn't exactly a rare magical name, the family having come over to the Colonies when New York was still the New Netherlands. They'd branched and moved off and lost track of each other several times since then. Heck, the kid could be from her own branch and she wouldn't know it. She hadn't spoken to a Holland more distantly related than her first-cousin/psuedo-sibling Kristopher since she was nine. The New York Hollands had made it clear they didn't care to have a half-blood or a wanna-be muggle as part of their unit, and as far as Danielle and Kris were concerned, the feeling was mutual. Danielle hadn't cared for the insults against her mother, and Kris much preferred being a part of the professional basketball team, the New York Nets, to the overly conservative New York Hollands.
"Holland," she repeated, recovering herself and giving the name its appropriate slightly bored-authoritative tone that was traditional in a role call, "Benjamin." She gave the boy answering to the name a somewhat more obvious scrutiny than she had subjected the other familiarly surnamed students to, but she managed to move on to the next name on the list without questioning his ancestory or state of origin.
She made it through another seven letters of the roster before she stopped again. She looked at the next name on the roster, she looked at the strangely dressed boy she had noticed as he came into the room, and looked at the name again. It hadn't changed, and the boy was sitting right there, looking like a perfect clone, as if created soley to dispute the perfectly reasonable inclination to deny his right to exist. Still, she couldn't accept something that was blantantly wrong even in the face of evidence to the contrary and she told him, in leiu of calling his name, "You can't possibly be Derwent Pierce the Third's son. We're not old enough to have thirteen year old children." She had been in the Third's year at Salem. At best, if he'd married Gabriella the day they graduated and immediately procreated, he might have a ten year old. Eleven, maybe, if Gabby had gotten pregnant while they were still in their seventh year and she hadn't quite been showing yet when they took their RATS, which Danielle seriously doubted. For a current intermediate student, she would have needed to have given birth to Derwent Pierce the Fourth in her fifth year, sixth at the latest, which Danielle would have definitely heard about thirteen years ago either way.
"Three's my brother," the kid responded, in leiu of the 'Here!' or 'Present!' or whatever else his classmates had used to verify their own existences.
"Ah," Danielle said, her world falling back into its normal configuration and her speculations about Gabriella and Derry vanished as quickly as they had appeared. She put a checkmark next to Derwent Pierce IV's name and moved on. The remainder of the alphabet passed without incident, thankfully, and she was able to begin the class.
"I've been told you are studying Animate to Inanimate transfiguration this unit." When the lack of reaction to this statement confirmed that she had been given the correct lesson plan for the day, she continued, "Today, each of you have a cricket on your desks." The students had probably noticed the small white cardboard boxes sitting in front of them; hopefully they had heeded the written instruction "DO NOT OPEN." There hadn't been any screaming prior to class at any rate, so she was going to assume they all still had their crickets until told otherwise. "Please be careful opening your box, and I recommend charming a barrier around your desk before letting them out."
She turned around and wrote on the board, under her name, "Enclosio - eN Clo See Oh." Turning back to face the class again, she explained the word's purpose. "This is the spell word for creating a weak targeted barrier that can withstand about a pound of force. Enclosio. That's N, the letter after L. Clo, with a long o. C, the letter after B. And O, the letter after N. N-Clo-C-O. Like summoning charms, you can select a target, so in this case, Enclosio Cricket. The wand should trace the outside end of the space you want to keep the cricket inside, so just run it around the edge of your desks. If done correctly, you should be able to cross the barrier without breaking it, but your cricket won't be able to jump off your desk." She expected she would still be chasing down crickets for most of the lesson anyway, but maybe this side lesson would help reduce it a little.
"You'll be turning your cricket into a rock. The transfiguration will work on most insects and some archnids. Personally, I don't like touching bugs but I don't want to kill them either, so I've used this transfiguration to turn bugs and spiders in my dorm or apartment into a rock that won't fly away or sting me, and can easily be tossed outside. Whether you make a standard rock or a stone statue of a cricket today is your choice. You will, of course, be graded higher if you succeed in transfiguring its shape as well as its material composition, but a stone cricket is a passing grade."
"The wand motion is a simple point, but that is deceptively easy. The hardest part of this transfiguration is that you will probably be going after a moving target. Transfigurations require more than enough concentration when your target isn't trying to get out of your crosshairs. Just keep focus and your wand pointed at the cricket. The spell word is Geocritas." Danielle wrote Geocritas on the board under Enclosio. "That's the letters G and O followed by Cree, long e, and ending with Tas. Gee. Oh. Cree-tas. Geocritas." On the board she added the pronunciation guide, Gee oh Cree Tas.
She did not demonstrate the spell for them. Her talents lay in teaching not doing. The New York Hollands were not well known for their magical prowess and strength, and they had a higher incidence rate of squibs than most families did. In school, her mediocre practical performance dropped her RATS and CATS scores to all Es in subjects with a practical exam, and college hadn't seen much improvement. Kris had been the nearest thing to a squib that magical schools accepted and he'd dropped out after failing all but one of his CATS to pursue a muggle education and basketball scholarship that would be more pertinent to his future.
Danielle could have created a stone cricket for them, certainly by the third try, but if she - an adult and teacher - failed at it, even once, that would have been seriously discouraging for the students, especially the third years who were presumably just starting the animate-to-inanimate unit for the first time.
Subthreads: Works for me by Arthur Carey, Aladren
Define 'brother' by Derry Four with Ben Holland
Class is closed (nm) by Prof. C.
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Danielle Holland
Substitute Lesson [3rd-5th Years]
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Danielle Holland
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Arthur Carey, Aladren
December 08, 2011 10:30 PM
Works for me by Arthur Carey, Aladren
Arthur was aware the Transfiguration professor was engaged, so while he did a small double take when he stepped into the Transfiguration classroom and a small woman he did not recognize was in front of the class, he decided this was not cause for alarm. It made no sense to him, since it wouldn’t seem to require more than having a cake baked and a new dress made and some invitations sent out, most of which the people getting married weren’t even directly involved in, but weddings were apparently quite difficult and time-consuming to plan.He studied the substitute professor, squinting at her slightly. She was very…nondescript. He didn’t like that very well. She seemed like someone it might be easy to overlook, and he didn’t like people who he couldn’t keep an eye on when they were around him. He kept thinking they were going to end up behind him.
Sometimes, Arthur was convinced there had been something traumatic in his early childhood that he’d viciously and absolutely thoroughly suppressed, despite having a pretty good memory of it. It didn’t make sense to him that nothing bad had ever happened to him except crashing into a wall one time and he should still have that kind of problem; Arnold crashed into things all the time, seriously at least twice, and it didn’t seem to have had any negative effects on him, at least not that way.
“Present,” he replied when his name was called off the roll, and he squinted a little harder at the professor when she stumbled over Benjamin Holland’s name. A disowned relative? When she suddenly broke protocol completely on Derwent, though, he concluded that he wasn’t quite following some relationship here, and he began to find the forgettable-looking Professor Holland a lot more potentially interesting. Though she did make him have to fake a slight cough to hide surprise when Derwent referred to her Derwent as his brother. Interesting.
Whatever else Professor Holland was or who she knew, though, she taught interesting things. He watched her carefully as she showed them how to create a selective barrier around their desk, then copied the spell around his own desk, drawing the tip of his wand sharply around the edges of the desk. He had not been tempted to open the box that said ‘Do Not Open’ – well, slightly, but he had control over himself – and was glad he had not since he now knew what was in it. Bugs jumping around unexpectedly would have been inconvenient.
Tipping his out, he put a freezing charm on it as well, then wondered if that had been right to do. Would it affect the Transfiguration somehow? He didn’t think it should, but he wasn’t sure about that.
Still, it was a little late to worry too much about it, so he half-shrugged to himself and lifted his wand again, repeating the incantation as Professor Holland had given it to them. He nodded shortly, pleased, when he found a lump of rock on his desk a moment later.
It was an irregular lump, though; it didn’t look quite like what he thought of as a stone, and looked nothing like the cricket he’d been aiming to produce. He grimaced slightly as that part caught up with his self-satisfaction. Alice, he was sure, had gotten it right on her first try.
He sat to wait for it to revert, hoping it would, before he had to try to make it. He was not going to take a passing grade, when he was sure he could get a perfect one soon enough and with only a little more effort.
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Arthur Carey, Aladren
Works for me
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Arthur Carey, Aladren
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Derry Four
December 15, 2011 11:37 AM
Define 'brother' by Derry Four
Derry entered the Transfiguration classroom, stuttered a step as he saw a stranger standing at the front of the room, then kept going. He took a seat in front of one of the white boxes and was sorely tempted to ignore the notice not to open it. Instead, he distracted himself by getting out his quill, inkpot, and a roll of parchment for taking notes, as well and placing his wand out on his desk for easy access. That, unfortunately, did not last long enough and by the time Substitue Professor Holland (Derry was mildly curious if she was any relation to Ben) closed the door, Derry had the white box in hand and was carefully peeking inside. He sat back quickly and slammed the flap closed again as something inside tried to attack his eye.Keeping one hand on the box to hold it closed - who knew what kind of miniturized monster lurked inside - Derry ansiously waiting through the early letters of the alphabet, terribly worried about what the day's lesson entailed. He guessed, from her reaction to Ben's name, that they probably weren't too closely related, but he'd ask Ben later anyway. Then she reached the spot in the roll call where Derry's name usually came and she just . . . stopped.
He realized, at her question, that she was the Holland he'd heard about Three going to school with. "He's my brother," Derry explained, seeking to ease her confusion, and so opting not to go into the complicated details. Derry was still having a fair amount trouble himself, sorting out the complexities about whether or not Derry Three was still his brother or not, so he certainly didn't expect an old classmate of Three's to grasp anything more than that he and Three had the same biological parents and that Three wasn't his dad. That was the only part of the whole thing that Derry wasn't having any problem understanding, and he kind of liked the simplicity of his answer as he'd said it. That made a lot more sense then everything Father and Thad had tried to explain over the summer. People didn't just stop being brothers just because Grandmother said so. Grandmother was a pretty powerful witch, but she wasn't that powerful. Mom had never used any word but brother to refer to Three's place in his life, and the only time Mom had ever steered him wrong was when she told him Three was gone forever when he was just down in Boston.
He'd really been far more angry that he'd been denied twelve years of having a real live big brother than that he'd been lied to, and he really didn't understand why he'd been grounded when he suggested to Father that they visit him sometime. Three was a pureblood, with as unassailable a pedigree as Derry's own (seeing as it was exactly the same); it wasn't like he was asking to visit Reggie or something (even though he really wanted to - camping with her dad had sounded like a totally awesome time). He knew better than to try something like that, and the only reason he'd dared it with Ben was because Holland - as evidenced by the substitute - was a fairly widespread magical surname and it hadn't been too hard to make Father think he was going to visit another wholly magical family.
The rest of the attendence passed without the creature in his box escaping and as Substitute Professor Holland explained the lesson, Derry relaxed a little as he found out he'd been frightened by a mere cricket. That was okay. Crickets were cool when you knew they weren't tiny vicious beasts. He secured his desk using the spell she taught them, and then let the entrapped cricket out of its box. It immediately tried at Derry's face again, but he leaned back in time for it to rebound off the barrier and fall back onto the desk. "I think he's got it out for me," Derry confided in his nearest neighbor, then readied his wand to try the transfiguration.
He cast the spell, pointed his wand at the cricket and completely missed. The magic bounced off harmlessly to the right while the cricket jumped toward the left and slowed a little as it hit the barrier, then sailed on through. "Uh-oh," Derry said, watching his cricket land on the floor. "Um, Stupify!" he cast the first spell he could think of to stop the cricket from escaping further. This time his aim was better and the cricket fell over. Derry carefully picked up the little guy and put him back on his desk. He tried casting the barrier again, hoping this time it would last a little more than three seconds, and then looked at his unconscious insect. "I guess I could transfigure him like that, but she said the hard part was hitting a moving target. Is this cheating?" In theory, he could just use en-envener-envenorate (something like that) to wake it up again, but he had trouble pronouncing that word so the spell didn't usually work for him.
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Derry Four
Define 'brother'
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Derry Four
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Ben Holland
December 15, 2011 5:09 PM
That's harder than it should be. by Ben Holland
Ben entered the Transfiguration room, and found a seat next to Four quickly. As he pulled out all his materials, the woman at the front of the class caught his eye. That certainly wasn’t his Head of House. Across the chalkboard, she had written Substitute Professor Holland. His last name wasn’t particularly rare, but he had never stumbled across in the magical world. He knew his father was from a family of purebloods up north, but no one talked about it much.He watched her as she walked past him to close the door. She didn’t look much like his father, or grandfather. Her hair wasn’t straight, but it didn’t bear the wild curls of that usually marked a Holland. When she called roll, she stumbled over his name for a brief moment. He felt his eyebrows push together as his curiosity spiked. From the look she gave him, she didn’t know much more about their shared name than he did. “Here,” he replied.
She continued through the names, and stopped again when she reached Four’s name. In the moment of silence, Ben wondered if she had something against third year boys in Teppenpaw. She asked about Three, and Ben immediately looked over to Four. His friend gave a brief, simple reply that Derwent Pierce the Third was his brother. Professor Holland continued the rest of the way down the roll without stopping again, and began the lesson.
Ben, knowing that his luck with small creatures wasn’t the best, quickly performed the barrier charm. He hoped that it worked, because he didn’t find chasing a cricket around a classroom particularly appealing. Moving very slowly, he pushed back the lid of the box and his cricket hopped out immediately. “Geocritas,” he said, attempting to keep his wand pointed at the insect. It froze, but did not turn to stone. Beside him, Four had stunned his cricket and was wondering if it was cheating to transfigure it how it was.
Ben shook his head, “I don’t think it is. It’s just making your job a little easier.” He looked from Derry’s cricket to his and noticed the one on his own desk was starting to move again. Not trusting his barrier, he removed his cowboy hat from his head and captured the little bug under it. He recast the barrier charm, and lifted the hat to attempt it again.
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Ben Holland
That's harder than it should be.
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Ben Holland
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