We all lose on Transfiguration

Professor Skies

April 27, 2018 8:20 AM

Beginners - Keep warm by Professor Skies

It was very strange, returning to classes without having actually gone anywhere over the holidays. She hoped the students had managed to have fun with their friends and blow off some steam, enjoy some silly snowball fights and the lack of classes, but she wondered how long it would be before cabin fever set in. Were they going to start squabbling like her daughters had done when cooped inside too much over rainy days when they’d been smaller? She definitely didn’t feel relaxed and rejuvenated. She felt tired and run down.

“Good morning class,” she greeted them. “Today, we have a wintry lesson,” the enchanted snow had faded from the paths once Midterm was over, but that didn’t mean the weather was warm yet. In spite of being in Arizona, the climate of Sonora resembled that of Ireland, thanks to some cunning weather charms and homesickness on the part of the founders. And Ireland was cold in January.

“We will be making gloves today. They don’t have to be warm ones, this spell will work to produce any type of glove. First years will start with a cloth bag, second years with a paper one. The spell is chirothecae,” the chalk wrote it out on the board behind her, along with the pronunciation. Kee-ROH-tae-ka. “Roll the r if you can,” she advised, demonstrating the pronunciation again slowly. “You will want to make a punctuated wand movement with a flick on each syllable, plus one additional flick at the end - one for each finger and the thumb,” she demonstrated, “Small, circular wrist motions between each flick,” she advised.

“As usual, you will get a better mark if your gloves are detailed, pretty or otherwise well-designed. Any questions?” she asked, “Ok. You may begin. And if you feel at all ill, please tell me sooner rather than later...”

OOC - posts will be marked on length, relevance, creativity and realism. If your character is having any issues/causing accidental magical damage/dropping down with a fever, please tag me in the subject line.

Subthreads:

I don't see the use of gloves like these... by Parker Fitzgerald with Gary Harper

We all lose by Heinrich Hexenmeister with Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus

Setting the bag on fire (oh Pro-fess-sor!) by Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari with Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw, Professor Skies

13 Professor Skies Beginners - Keep warm 26 Professor Skies 1 5

Parker Fitzgerald

May 04, 2018 10:54 AM

I don't see the use of gloves like these... by Parker Fitzgerald

Parker was feeling good about this Transfiguration class. A sentence he would have laughed at a year before, mainly because it took so long for him to get boots right. Now as he sat in class wearing his nice boots, which he changed by the day to match the weather outside as he walked from the common room into school, he felt like he could do wintry changes. That is until Professor Skies mentioned a paper bag and Parker's face fell.

Cloth or things that looked like the intended item were one thing, a paper bag was something else. He listened to the rest of the instructions, trying to muster the excitement he had felt mere moments ago, only to find a deflated balloon of excitement instead.

As Professor Skies talked about getting extra points for gloves being pretty, Parker racked his brain for any example of pretty gloves he could think of. He knew that he needed a mental example from past Transfig classes, but pretty gloves were not in his mind. He simply looked at the paper bag hoping that an idea would come to him.

Most of the gloves he'd experienced in his life were fairly utilitarian. Used for gardening, or keeping hands warm. The guys working with horses and cows near his house or the construction workers on the projects his dad worked on had rougher gloves. These were not pretty. Nothing about them was pretty. Then the image of the gloves Tatya was wearing on his first day at Sonora came into his head. Yes, Tatya's gloves were exactly what he thought Professor Skies was thinking of.

So Parker took out his wand and cleared his throat. Even though he'd been doing magic with a wand for over a year, it still felt silly. He felt like everyone was watching to see if he made any mistakes.

He practiced the small wrist motions and flicks first to make sure he got that down before he tried the word. Then imagining the gloves that Tatiana wore that first day, Parker started saying the word. Slowly, trying to roll his r, but having it more sputter than anything.

The bag though, began to change. First it turned white, then to cloth. Parker nodded his head, not a bad start, but not exactly gloves.

"Ok Parker. You got this," he said as he raised his wand up again imagining a pair of Tatiana's gloves.

41 Parker Fitzgerald I don't see the use of gloves like these... 1402 Parker Fitzgerald 0 5

Gary Harper

May 06, 2018 8:23 PM

Anything can be useful, if you put your mind to it by Gary Harper

Gary put his campaign notebook away and flipped open his class notebook as Professor Skies began class. He was a bit stuck in his planning, and didn't mind the break to do actual classwork. Sometimes he was on a roll and didn't particularly enjoy being pulled back to 'the real world', but this was definitely not one of those times. He was happy to put aside the corner he'd written himself into and attempt to twist reality to his will once more. He doubted this magic business would ever stop feeling strange to him. Oh well, here we go again.

The task set before them didn't sound to complicated, again putting aside all known physical laws and such, just turn a paper bag into a glove. Sure, why not? What kind of glove could he try to make? He'd get bonus points for fancy ones. As has become his custom when he needed inspiration, he turned back to his game world. Sethas would wear something both elegant and functional, leather, arrow snaring? Maybe. He turned the image over in his mind, yeah that could work. He wouldn't even need to do to much with the color between the soft deerskin and the brown paper. It was going to take a bunch of other changes though, that was going to be difficult.

Gary looked over at Parker who had wound up sitting next to him again. His classmate had a white cloth bag setting in front of him, "Looks like you've got the material and color variations out of the way first." He considered for a moment, "That's a good plan, it's like in mathematics, if you can reduce a new problem down to a previously solved problem you can get to the solution easier." He looked at his own paper bag, "I'd better get started on mine."

Focusing on the bag in front of him, and recalling the image he had generated, Gary tried his hand at the spell. Without needing to worry to much about the color, he focused on shape and material. Once that was done, then he'd worry about the embellishments. The bag obligingly shifted in form, and he was left with a dull looking brown leather glove. He smiled at Parker, "You're a genius, now to change a boring object to a fancier one should be relatively simple, right?"

2 Gary Harper Anything can be useful, if you put your mind to it 1404 Gary Harper 0 5

Heinrich Hexenmeister

May 08, 2018 4:36 PM

We all lose by Heinrich Hexenmeister

Heinrich wasn’t sure whether he was upset at the Quarantine that had trapped everyone in the school this midterm or relieved that it meant he was spared the choice of staying here anyway or going back to the home of the uncle he barely knew.

On the one hand, staying at a school where everyone spoke a foreign language (or rather being at a school where he was the only speaking his foreign language) was rough, and he probably would have gone to Uncle Karl’s house just to hear people speak German again, and he supposed he kind of missed Hilda and Hansel a little, and his siblings at least would be there even if his parents weren’t. Plus staying might have lead to people asking why he wasn’t going home, and even if he had the words to explain he wasn’t sure ‘my parents are in jail’ was really something he wanted to share with anyone here.

On the other hand, he was still a bit angry about getting shipped off to America in the first place, and he was pretty sure hearing German again would wear pretty thin pretty quickly once it set in that he wasn’t home and Uncle Karl wasn’t Mom and Dad, and getting all bad news from the lawyers and probably not even getting to floo his parents nevermind visit them while the trial was still in progress. He doubted, too, that the stress fueled fights that had laid dormant while he was away would stay so once he was in the presence of his uncle and siblings.

Neither option had been very appealing.

But going to Uncle Karl’s was taken off the table. Instead, he got to share the experience of being cut off from his parents and family with everyone in the school instead of facing that by himself. Somehow, it did make it just a little easier knowing nobody else was having a happy reunion with their family either, that the isolation wasn’t unique to him. Which probably made him a bad person, but the shared experience of being stuck here meant he felt a bit more connected to these English speaking strangers than he had expected to after months of barely communicating with anyone.

Even if they did look at him a bit strangely when he wished the people he passed in the hall a good slide on New Year’s Eve.

But now the midterm was over and it was back to classes. After four months of hearing English basically non-stop, he was getting better at listening comprehension. So he mostly followed Professor Skies’ lecture. A few words here and there still lacked any kind of meaning to him, but overall he was getting good at following the gist if not the details of what people said.

Putting together sentences of his own was still a different story altogether, but his understanding of both spoken and written English was improving by leaps and bounds.

Still, midterm connections or not, English was hard and he was grateful that it wasn’t a partners assignment. He set to writing out his transfiguration table (in German) by himself, comparing the cloth bag he’d been given to a pair of nice gardening gloves his mother used when tending to her flower garden. (Which he and his siblings had never been allowed near since most of the flowers in it were poisonous. He briefly considered if maybe the murder charge against his parents wasn’t actually true before loyally dismissing the possibility and reasserting his belief in their innocence.)

He picked up his wand and practiced the movement a few times, but it was almost always the incantation that cause him problems. His German accent just didn’t mesh very well with the mostly Latin words. Granted, he did not actually recall ever seeing either of his parents transfigure a bag into a glove before, but he doubted the incantation would have been ‘chirothecae’ if they had.

The good thing was that English was also a Germanic language, so Latin was fairly foreign to the rest of the class, too. That knowledge made his own difficulty with it marginally more tolerable.

“Kee-ROH-tae-ka,” he said, repeating the sounds as closely as he could recall hearing them. “Kee-ROH-tae-ka,” he said again, and again, until it felt - well, not natural or comfortable, but at least manageable.

Then he put it together with the wand motion and applied his will and memory of the garden glove, and . . . got something of approximately the right color green, with the purple embroidery of the nightshade flower, but the shape was all wrong. The glove was too round and the fingers were much too fat, too short, and all the same size, positioned evenly around the ‘glove’ instead of making four fingers and a thumb.

He sighed heavily and glanced at his neighbor’s progress to see how badly he was doing in comparison. “Wie geht’s?” He questioned before remembering himself, shaking his head in self-irritation at his mistake, and translating to English, “How goes it?” He grimaced at his own work. “Mein ist like ball.” He would have rather said baloon, but he didn’t know the word for that.

1 Heinrich Hexenmeister We all lose 1414 Heinrich Hexenmeister 0 5

Parker Fitzgerald

May 22, 2018 3:13 PM

My mind... is useful? I mean. Yes. Useful. by Parker Fitzgerald

PParker nodded to Gary's comment about math. He'd honestly never thought of math that way, and if he had thought about math at all since he'd come to Sonora, it was that he didn't have to study it anymore. But the way Gary mentioned it made sense. Make things smaller, easier, and then build from there.

It had not been Parker's original idea to not transform the paper bag all in one go. It was merely because he was not very good at Transfiguration. Or at least, that's how Parker saw it. But here was Gary, saying that he was a smart. No, Gary had used the word genius. Parker was a bit bewildered by the whole thing. He wasn’t sure he’d ever had the word associated with him, and a part of him had sparked to life at the words Gary was using.

Parker looked at Gary’s paper bag, which was now brown leather glove looking like the type that the cowboys used, or his father when doing yard work. Parker looked back at his white cloth bag. He felt embarrassed for a moment at what Gary might think.

Turning his head to Gary, Parker asked, “You’re my friend right? Cause this glove might end up looking a bit odd.”

As soon as Parker had said it, he knew how he felt. He felt Gary was his friend. They were both muggles, both boys, and in the same year. Besides that, Gary was often nice to him, and Parker hoped, he’d been nice back to Gary.

Ok Parker thought and tried to imagine Tatya’s gloves from the first day. With a wave of his wand, the cloth bag moved and formed a long elegant looking white glove. It wasn’t decorated at all, but it did look a lot like the glove Tatya had worn.

“Look at that. It worked,” Parker said under his breath. Now for the hard part. What kind of things did she have on her gloves. Snowflakes maybe? They were definitely sparkly. Parker pushed the idea of how hard it would be to make the gloves sparkle out of his mind.

Why would it be impossible to make the gloves sparkle. I play a sport where I fly on broom. And the gloves were a bag moments ago.

41 Parker Fitzgerald My mind... is useful? I mean. Yes. Useful. 1402 Parker Fitzgerald 0 5

Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

June 19, 2018 8:11 PM

Setting the bag on fire (oh Pro-fess-sor!) by Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari

Everyone was so gloomy without you, Katya had written. But it was still Rozhdestvo - Sonia had a beautiful party and Mama let me go. She conjured knockout roses, too, and I put some in my hair - red and white - and Grisha and Rodya and one of Grisha’s friends danced with me!! Imagine, Dmitry Mikhaelovich is not even in the family!!

Tatiana could not imagine it - not least because of the way Katya had written those last two sentences, casually referring to Anya’s young man as “Rodya” and lumping him together with Grisha. Katya was nothing if not proper about such things. If she was calling him “Rodya” like that, it meant he had been about the house far too much in her absence.

I have enclosed a painting of the roses in the vases, and the candles. I am sitting with Mama and Papa and Alexei this evening and Mama is painting Sonia in her pretty dress in oils while I write this. I am sewing a lot, and Mama says my stitches are getting very good. Lessons go on as always all day and half the night. I miss you so much my darling and miss you and want you to come home but until then you must write lots.

Tatiana didn’t know if Katya was really gloomy, but her letter had thrown Tatiana into precisely that frame of mind. She should have been there. She should have danced with flowers in her hair at Sonia’s party, and she should have seen the candles and roses for herself, not just in Katya’s watercolor, and she should have been sprawled on the rug reading while Katya sewed and Mama painted, or while Mama sewed and Katya painted, or maybe playing the balalaika while they did that, or playing with Alexei while Papa read to them all. Instead, though, she was stuck here, and had no better chance of going home at Pascha.

She listened to Professor Skies with scant interest, even though the topic was one that should have been of some interest to her. It would be good, she knew intellectually, not to have to worry about being caught outside without gloves because she forgot them, but what did she care about taking the proper care to keep her hands and face from taking sun? She was stuck here among Americans, who acknowledged no such niceties, for who knew how long.

Her mood was not improved by the appearance of the incantation on the board. ‘Ch’ was the sound that ч made. She knew this because the English ‘h’ was almost-not-quite the sound that х made and ‘x’ was not the sound that х made - it sounded almost more like к, which was already perfectly well covered by the English ‘k’ and also, for some reason, ‘c,’ when it wasn’t busy making it’s own sound and having that inexplicably replicated by the figure ‘s’! - and it had often confused her when she was learning to read English. Sometimes, when she was tired, she still did sound words out wrong based on that kind of thing. So now they were telling her that it was making a sound most like….х?! And how did one ‘roll’ a letter which was also a verb?

Paper bag in front of her, she closed her eyes so she didn’t read the word and sound it out the way she was used to sounding out English and started repeating the sounds Professor Skies had made in her head. Her head was going to hurt by the end of this class, she was sure. She was inclined to share the sensation, but she was too old to get away with that, and -

There was a sound. She opened her eyes. Her paper bag was on fire.

She exclaimed a word her mother would not have liked to have heard a young lady use as she pushed her chair back and stood up in surprise. The bag was already curling up to nothing, but the damage was done - now she was no doubt the center of attention. At least, she thought, no-one else here spoke enough Russian to know she’d just said a rude word….

16 Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari Setting the bag on fire (oh Pro-fess-sor!) 1396 Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari 0 5

Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw

June 24, 2018 12:48 AM

Eh, zenme le? by Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw

Dorian took a seat next to Tatya in Transfiguration. The task for the day sounded relatively pleasing for both of them. Tatya, he was sure, would be happy because she liked gloves, and the instruction from Professor Skies that they should roll their ‘r’s pleased him because he had a very difficult time not rolling his automatically. So far, it hadn’t produced any disastrous results - there seemed to be a difference between mispronouncing and having an accent, although where the line was, he wasn’t quite sure. But knowing that his accent would come in useful for once rather than being a hindrance at best and buffalo to the chest at worst made it a good day.

He refrained from commenting on this to Tatya for the time being, because she had her eyes shut and looked like she was still processing. He understood the need for that, and so didn’t think much of it. He took some time pondering the gloves he might make. He had quite a few to think on as a frame of reference, given his friendship with Tatya. Professor Skies had said the lesson was wintery, but also that they could make any type, and with Tatya sitting right next to him, it was hard to keep his mind on non-Tatya type gloves, so he figured he was best of making those. Perhaps he could try to replicate the ones he had got her for Christmas. He felt positive about those, seeing as they also reminded him of home and his mother, having been picked out with her assistance, and he found that it was always easier to cast spells when he felt happy about what he was making.

Before he could begin though, Tatya’s bag began to smoke. He glanced at her, but her eyes were still shut. He was about to say something when it burst into flames, her eyes opened and he got a brief and to-the-point lesson in Russian swearing. The incident was over before either of them could do anything, the little bag having burnt itself to nothing.

“Hey, Tatya, chto sluchilos?” he asked concerned, laying a hand gently on her arm. Obviously she was swearing and startled because she’d set the bag on fire. And obviously that had happened because she was sick and presumably upset. But what about? He had thought she’d be happy about this lesson.

13 Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw Eh, zenme le? 1401 Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw 0 5

Professor Skies

June 24, 2018 12:49 AM

Could be worse by Professor Skies

Selina kept her eyes on the class, looking out for trouble. Since they had confirmed it was a magical illness causing all these incidents, it didn’t feel like a case whether or not there would be trouble - it felt like a case of who. She was keeping a particularly close eye on Tatiana, Dorian and Sylvia. The first two had been directly mentioned by Grayson in the staff meeting as being probably infected - Tatiana having accidentally changed her test paper and Dorian having made angry notes appear in French, and neither had yet been to Aisha with a fever. Sylvia’s cousin had been through all stages of the illness, and it seemed likely that she might have caught it. Although anyone any of them had sat with at breakfast or worked with in class was also a risk, presumably - this thing seemed to spread easily - but she didn’t know who that covered, and the closeness of the relationship increased the risk for Sylvia (she also found herself throwing more than occasional glances at Jehan and Vlad for much the same reason).

A cry of surprise from Tatiana and Dorian’s bench drew her attention, along with a lick of flame, but before she’d had a chance to do anything about it, the incident was over. As incidents went, that wasn't too bad. She could deal with the loss of a small paper bag. She pulled a spare from the box on her desk, making her way over and setting it down in front of Tatiana.

“Are you having a particular problem with the class, Tatiana?” she asked, assuming that the girl must have been feeling reasonably upset or frustrated for that to happen - even with the illness, the accidental magic seemed to still be linked to strong emotion. Her tone was gentle, and there was no suggestion that Tatiana was being chastised over the incident. “Or is it something you would rather confide in your friend?” she asked, hesitating only a fraction of a second before the final word of the sentence, her eyes flickering over Dorian’s hand on Tatiana’s arm. “Assuming that was you, not you?” she added, her gaze switching from Tatiana to Dorian. It was Tatiana’s bag, and it seemed most likely to be a childish burst of anger, and she couldn’t really see why Dorian would end up setting his friend’s work on fire. “I know you’re both sick,” she added, again underlining the fact that no one was in trouble here.

13 Professor Skies Could be worse 26 Professor Skies 0 5

Tatiana

June 28, 2018 11:17 PM

Yeah, I could have Hormones on top of my moods. by Tatiana

Normally, hearing Russian was enough to improve Tatiana’s mood by itself – partially for the familiarity, and partially for the thought that her friends cared enough to specifically make the effort to speak it to her. At the moment, though, she just registered that Dorian didn’t really speak Russian at all, and she would never be able to teach him to and she would never learn to speak English or French or Chinese properly either and everything was pointless and awful.

“Ya khochu domoi,” said Tatiana. I want to go home.

Professor Skies promptly swept over and was talking. A lot. “Tak mnogo slov’!” complained Tatiana - so many words. She knew this wasn’t reasonable – there really weren’t that many more words than she thought there would be in Russian this once – but she didn’t care about that, either. “Ya ne bolen – ya serzhus’ – Angliskii alfavit glup.” I’m not sick, I’m angry – the English alphabet is stupid.

Dorian probably understood the majority of what she was saying, but that didn’t make it any less rude to talk to him in Russian at a natural pace, or to speak Russian in front of Professor Skies at all. Or to insult the professor’s alphabet, which bore more than a passing resemblance to Dorian’s…. Tatiana rubbed her eyes. “I am sorry – je suis desolee,” she added to Dorian in French. “L’Anglais dificile est.” She thought those words were mutually comprehensible between English and French, making it a good compromise that still favored her friend.

16 Tatiana Yeah, I could have Hormones on top of my moods. 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Dorian (and Professor Skies)

June 29, 2018 11:31 AM

Please, Merlin, no by Dorian (and Professor Skies)

Dorian took a moment to process Tatya’s first remark, and in that time Professor Skies had come over. So by the time he realised Tatya had said I want to go home, the teacher was already there and there wasn’t much he could do except feel his heart break a little bit for his friend. It had been hard on everyone missing out on their Christmas holidays, of course, but he tended to think he and Tatya had suffered more than most - they were both very close with their families (or certain members of them) and, unlike many students, had no relatives here at school. And they were both lost in a foreign language here. He knew how much she looked forward to speaking her own language again because he felt it too. They had been hurt on multiple levels by the separations, in ways that others couldn’t understand.

He had assumed that Tatya would speak English with their teacher and was thus caught off guard by the continuation of her speech in Russian, and the speed at which it was delivered. He recognised the difference between Tatya talking to herself and Tatya talking to others, and this was definitely the former - he was pretty sure Professor Skies was not secretly fluent in Russian, or that Tatya would have been able to keep anyone being so a secret, she would have been too excited. Even though he didn’t think Tatya expected him to follow, he did his best to try. He definitely hoped the Professor understood less than he did, because he was pretty sure the word ‘angry’ had been used, and that English had been called some variety of stupid.
Selina pursed her lips. It wasn’t the first time she had been on the receiving end of a burst of frustrated Russian but she couldn’t say she particularly appreciated it. Temper was one of Tatiana’s worse qualities, and was one she really needed to master now that she was no longer a child. Between that and the ostentatious jewellery, Selina had the impression that she was rather spoilt. Still, she was well aware that further irritating someone who had just set something on fire was probably not in her own best interests, and so she merely raised her eyebrows at Tatiana and looked Not Particularly Impressed until she had calmed down enough to switch to English, and at least had the good grace to apologise.

“That’s alright,” she nodded, in response to the apology, although Tatiana was then back into- no, it was French this time. “I’ll leave you to it,” she added to them both, as the majority of the remarks were being made to Dorian, she took that to be the answer to her question of whether Tatiana wanted anything specific from her or just to talk it out with her friend.

“De rien,” he acknowledged her apology, “Et oui, je sais,” he added, regarding the fact that English difficult was.

“Tatya idi domoy… soon,” he reassured her. He wanted to hug her properly because he felt so sorry for her, but as they were in class he just settled for a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “Vidite sem'yu soon. Émilie et wǒde mama me manque aussi,” he added, slipping from Russian into French as he found himself lacking the vocabulary, and into Chinese as he almost always did when speaking about his mother, or things associated with her.

“Angliskii glup - no Tatya ne glup,” he encouraged, falling into the trap of copying her adjective exactly, even though it required a different ending when referring to her, “So, Tatya will win against English.”

OOC - Dorian’s word endings are deliberately mangled in Russian. ‘Tatya go home soon’ ‘See family soon.’ ‘I miss Émilie and my mother too.’ ‘English stupid - but Tatya not stupid.’

13 Dorian (and Professor Skies) Please, Merlin, no 26 Dorian (and Professor Skies) 0 5

Tatiana

July 01, 2018 12:04 AM

It’s probably inevitable. by Tatiana

Dorian putting his hand on her arm had never occurred to Tatiana as a remotely strange or noteworthy thing for him to do, and him putting a hand on her shoulder did not register as much more intimate. They were friends – it was natural that one of them should try to comfort the other if the first was upset. And so she didn’t think twice about putting her hand over his and giving it an appreciative squeeze, any more than she would have thought twice about holding hands with Katya on a walk.

“Merci, Dorya,” said Tatiana wearily. “Tu bon ami.”

Something about his statement about his mother and Émilie nagged at her - there was something off about it, besides the shift between French and Chinese. Émilie et his mama - no Papa and the brother? Tatiana knew he was closest to those relatives - but while Tatiana shared her room and toys and tutor and jewels with Katya, she missed Anya and Sonia, too, and, of course, Mama and Papa and both brothers. Maybe he just meant he missed them most and had gotten lost in languages - or she had missed an implication because neither of the languages was her own.

“Tu verre ta maman a bientot, aussi,” said Tatiana, inadvertently confusing the future tense of ‘to see’ with the noun for a drinking glass.

She smiled a little when he assured her that she was smarter than English. “Nous sommes boleye intelligents,” she corrected him, starting in French before switching to Russian for the superlative and then back to French. “My vyigraem.” We will win.

OOC: Tatiana’s French deliberately off - ‘tu bon ami’ would literally be ‘you good friend’ (she’s speaking French with Russian grammar, literally translating the Russian expression of the same sentiment word-for-word) and she tries to say “You’ll see your mother soon as well” but confuses ‘tu verras’ (verb expression, “you’ll see”) with ‘verre’ (glass).

16 Tatiana It’s probably inevitable. 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Dorian

July 02, 2018 9:12 AM

Can I be elsewhere where it happens? by Dorian

“Merci,” he smiled, when Tatya complimented him on being a good friend. Dorian always tended to look slightly surprised by the compliments he received, but also very touched, and it was one of the times when being utterly useless at concealing his feelings might have been considered a good thing - it was easy for his friends to see how highly valued their kind words were. He didn’t break out in a beaming smile, because Tatya still sounded sad and tired, and her praise was not as effusive as it had been when he’d come to her rescue in the library and vowed to fight Professor Wrights’s assertions about her. But the receipt of the compliment, the thanks for it, were more than mere mechanical politeness.

He wasn’t entirely sure of the way Tatya mangled her next sentence - sometimes things went by so fast that it was hard to pick up what the mistake had been. It had sounded like she’d said ‘glass’ only she obviously hadn’t meant to, and it was hard to tell sometimes whether she’d made a completely incorrect word choice or just botched the pronunciation. Still, when she could get three quarters of the words right, and there was context, he could get the meaning, and he nodded.

“Bientôt,” he agreed, with an equally weary smile.

Her smile seemed to get more and more back to usual, as she squared up to the task of beating back the stupid English language - although, now he thought about it, it wasn’t really English. Probably then, she was upset by the English letters. That was one frustration he was glad not to have too often - the pronunciation very occasionally tripped him up, but at least they were familiar forms to him - although he well understood the frustrations of dealing with other writing systems. He would never allow any of his friends to say it, but Chinese was seriously a pain on that front. It was beautiful, and he loved it, but it frustrated him no end that he would probably never finish learning to read and write it (or at least, it certainly felt that way now).

“So, we shall try without making fire?” he suggested. “There is any particular point you want help or just… taked some time to make sense?” he checked. Once he was sure Tatya did not need any further advice, he turned his attention to his paper bag, trying to focus on the gloves he planned to make. He found it hard sometimes - his brain was still preoccupied with the fact that Tatya had called him a good friend, but that she was still a bit sad and weary, and that he understood her sadness and her frustration… All of these things were much more important than gloves, and it was hard to stop turning them over in his mind. Even though he felt he had done all he could about them for now, he would sooner have dwelt on his friends and his feelings, they still wanted to occupy his thoughts… Of course, the gloves he was thinking of were connected to Tatya, and to his mother, so maybe he didn’t need to shut them out of his thoughts entirely… He pictured his mother picking out the gloves for Tatya at the store, and that sated his mind’s desire to dwell on thoughts of home and his feelings about them all… “Chirothecae” he cast, taking his time over the word so he could fit in all the flicks with his wand. The bag rippled and shifted, the material changing the most, becoming the delicately patterned red silk of the gloves he’d got Tatya for Christmas. The shape was a good deal off though - there were four fingers and a thumb, but the gloves were baggy and poorly structured. They would have hung loose even as winter gloves on him, and definitely were not the refined tailoring that a young lady would expect.

“I think not quite up to your standard,” he smiled, turning to see how Tatya was getting on.

13 Dorian Can I be elsewhere where it happens? 1401 Dorian 0 5

Tatiana

July 02, 2018 5:45 PM

Doubt it. by Tatiana

“It just says it all not-same,” grumbled Tatiana, glaring and waving toward the word on the board. “Not like always, or like we do – glupyi letters.”

Nothing to do, though, but try again, and try to get it right, and hope for the best. As usual. This was not a strategy Tatiana particularly liked – it was not efficient and did not involve concrete steps she could take to get what she wanted, at least more often than not. Sometimes, if she was lucky, it did – but even then they were usually tiny, tedious steps. It was all so depressing, sometimes she could either cry or hit something. Or, in this case, set something on fire.

Mama would not be pleased with her, she thought. Mama always lectured her about keeping her temper, whether it was happy or angry or sad – about how she was too expressive, too emotional, too changeable, how she needed to learn to be more serene. Serenity did not come easily to her, though – in fact, most of the time, as she had just demonstrated, it did not come to her at all. Her feelings just swept up on her and she reacted to them before she could think. She could not help it, or if she could, she didn’t know how, any more than she could help it that her moods had always changed quickly.

Her bag began to bend into a roughly hand-shaped…shape, but still looked rather dull and brown. She frowned critically at them as Dorian spoke and she looked at his gloves instead. They were familiar-looking but not quite right.

“Maybe the little not so,” agreed Tatiana. “But only nemnogo nepravil’nyi.” Only slightly wrong.

16 Tatiana Doubt it. 1396 Tatiana 0 5

Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus

July 02, 2018 6:36 PM

That's....cheerful. by Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus

The Quarantine had kind of disappointed Peyton. She missed her parents and siblings-especially Ryan-as well as her niece, nephews and cousins. Plus, she'd missed Marcus and Melanie's wedding. The Crotalus had been quite glad on two points though. First off, that Sophie had been allowed to go home to Ryan and their kids. It had bothered Peyton tremendously that her brother might have to spend the holidays without his wife. The other, more selfish feeling, was that well, Eden was also here under quarantine and therefore she couldn't...be there to replace Peyton for Sally, Jake and Arnold. She still had to worry about that brother taking Ryan's place though.

And at least she had Ivy and Vlad, who had included her in the larger celebration with their cousins who were also Ryan's cousin but not hers. She also had Jasmine. It had been nice having her best friend outside her own family around and she'd even been invited to an ice skating party. Though, it had been Vlad who invited her, not his roommate that had been hosting it. So she'd felt a bit uneasy there and had come with brownies that she'd baked as an expression of gratitude for being allowed to be part of the group. After all, Peyton wasn't entirely sure Dorian wanted her or Ivy or Jasmine there since he didn't invite them, so brownies were a nice...gesture. She hoped they'd been appreciated.

And of course, her ice skating was not quite on par with Ivy, Dorian and Tatiana but she seemed to have done better than Ruby had.

The Crotalus had felt slighty bad too. The entire class was included except for two people and while it wasn't her fault, she still felt for them. If it had been everyone but her, she would have been upset.

Added to that was that it was the two Muggleborn boys not included. That didn't...really make them, Dorian in particular, look good. She had considered asking him if she could send them notes inviting them, even though she didn't know them that well either but felt she hadn't had the right to do so. It was okay for Vlad to invite her and Ivy and Tatiana to invite Jasmine because Dorian invited Vlad and Tatiana and said it was okay for them to invite others. In fact, Peyton had wanted to invite Jasmine too, because she didn't want her friend excluded and that had put her in an even more awkward position than asking if she could invite Gary and Parker, because Jasmine was her friend and she didn't really know the two boys that well. So she was glad that Tatiana had while apologizing to the other Crotalus for not doing so.

And she was sure that Dorian hadn't been deliberately excluding two boys he wasn't close to based on their blood status as it was that he hadn't actually invited her, Ivy or Jasmine either. Peyton firmly believed it hadn't been an anti-Muggleborn thing, but a case of him inviting his friends and allowing them to bring their other friends. She just hoped that Gary and Parker didn't take it as Dorian being prejudiced, when she doubted it was personal against them.

If only she had felt comfortable inviting Connor. Then he could have invited Gary at least. Or Gary's roommate could have. If Vlad and Tatiana could have invited others, Peyton assumed Jehan could have too.

How Parker could have been able to join in, she was unsure of. Maybe through Tatiana since they were both Pecaris? Or through Gary since Parker was part of their Dungeons and Dragons club. Peyton wasn't sure what that was but they were connected through it. But then Gary wouldn't have had any more right than she would have to invite someone.

She supposed she could have appealed to Ruby's Teppish-ness to get her to invite their last two classmates, as Ruby had been invited by Dorian and had the same rights as Vlad and Tatiana to invite others but the other girl had seemed preoccupied with trying to skate.

Anyway, it was over now and it was what it was. If they felt bad, it wasn't her fault but she was still sorry about it. Maybe she should hold a get-together with her whole year to make up for it. Well, her year and Ivy and maybe Connor.

Right now though, it was time for Transfiguration and time to forget about party plans-plans she wasn't sure she could even pull off, parties that very well might end up her, Ivy, Vlad, and Jasmine. Oh and possibly Connor. Still, the only thing she felt confident about was providing refreshments.

She turned her attention to Professor Skies. Okay, so they were making gloves and as usual pretty, detailed ones got better points. This sort of bothered Peyton. The other girls in the Beginner class were the very frilly fancy sparkly sort and she really wasn't. Therefore, they were bound to make fancier prettier gloves than she was.The sort that were more Victorian lady type than useful for use in cold weather. Her gloves were sure to be less pretty because she was, well, not sparkly, not frilly. She didn't wear a lot of expensive jewelry the way they did. Not that her family couldn't afford it, but Peyton was generally more down to earth in that way. More understated. Though she often felt like she should start just to fit in, even if it really wasn't her to be dressed up outside of formal occasions, because being different sucked.

Then again, Ivy wasn't a fancy girl, and that tended to make Peyton feel better. Still, Ivy wasn't in her year and right now, they didn't even share classes. She was surrounded by Jasmine, Ruby, and Tatiana as well as Sylvia and Caitlin who were definitely really proper though less over the top with their jewlery than Tatiana was. Peyton herself only wore a necklace that Grandmother O'Malley had given her when they'd visited her father's family in Boston,which was a family heirloom and a charm bracelet that Ryan had given her. Both of these items were on the costly side, the bracelet being real silver but what was more important was their sentimental value. Something that belonged to her ancestors that her grandmother thought she was worthy of having and a gift from her favorite brother. Peyton basically kept all gifts Ryan had given her through out the years with her here at Sonora from the now rather beaten up stuffed koala he'd gotten her as a baby-and that she'd named after him-to this bracelet he'd sent her for the holidays this year.

Now she had to envision something...fancy. Jewels, which the Crotalus was surrounded by all day long, were fancy but that didn't seem very....glove-like. A glove full of gems would be awfully heavy and just generally uncomfortable. Actually wearing gloves at a crowded party would get awfully sweaty.

She imagined, instead, a delicate flower pattern on white gloves. "Chirothecae" . What she ended up with was....an elaborately patterned mitten with a giant sized thumb. Great.

A stream of German reached her ears and Peyton turned to Heinrich. "Um..." She glanced at his product. "A bit like yours." She held her glove up and puzzled at what he said after. Something about the ball? Was he asking her or just asking something about it? "Pardon? I'm sorry, I don't speak German." Peyton explained. She didn't want to be presumptuous.

11 Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus That's....cheerful. 1403 Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus 0 5