Connor Pierce
April 22, 2005 9:23 PM
A New Kind of Class by Connor Pierce
Connor stared at the posters on the walls, fascinated. The pictures of stars and comets were moving. It was like having televisions programmed to replay the same thing again and again all over the place. The mobile hanging over the room also looked unusually realistic. Still more proof that magic was strange.He watched an asteroid hurtle into one of Mercury's moons and tried to imagine Beverly's reaction. He had discovered in less than twenty-four hours that whenever he started feeling like he was in prison doing life without parole, thinking of his sister could make it a little easier. Oh, he had enjoyed his conversation with Adam in the common room and the girls from the flying lesson were all right, but he couldn't help but feel like he was trying to make alliances with the other inmates so he wouldn't be trampled on.
Looking around the room, he saw some people he had identified and began filing away information on and some he hadn't. Far more fell into the latter category than the former, if his vision could be trusted in the gloom. It made sense for the Astronomy teacher to like it dark, but Connor had a feeling that the nighttime illusion created by the dim light and the star posters would probably put some people to sleep.
Lost in his thoughts, he was slightly startled when the teacher, Ms. Dione-no, Professor Dione, he had to remember that-began to speak. He had to hide a smile when she informed them that they had to call her Professor Dione and nothing else, thinking it ironic that he had been reminding himself that she was 'Professor' only seconds earlier. He raised an eyebrow at her little star analogy. Real pleasant, this one, but the inmates usually didn't have too much say in who the deputies were. It occured to him that only a cop's son would probably see it like that, but he had never had a problem with what his parents had done for a living before Billy Pierce met up with one bullet too many and Rachel Pierce became a housewife, or, more accurately, housewidow.
The pretest came as a surprise, but he had been used to far stranger things happening around him long before he ever set foot in Sonora Academy. People had once said he'd be a Ranger just like his daddy, always ready for anything, but those people hadn't known that you had to be ready for anything when anything could and often would happen at any given second. Bizzare things had happened around him since he was a small child, and the older he got the worse it got. Pulling out a sheet of the peculiar paper they called 'parchment', he attempted to write his name and only had to cross out his efforts three times before he finally got something approaching a grip on the quill, stupid thing. He had never before realized just how wonderful ballpoint pens were.
1-Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter,Saturn,Uranus, Neptune, Pluto
2-Pluto and Jupiter
3-oval
It was after question three that they grew difficult, leading to a number of wild guesses.
4-Mercury, close to the sun
5-Galileo, Aristotle, and Paracelsus, around Neptune
6-Jupiter
7-true
8-Will Shakespeare
9-creatures live on terrestrial planets and do not live on jovian planets, terrestrial planets have rougher terrain than jovian planets, one kind's bigger than the other.
10-It turns sideways,like Venus
In the end, he was sure numbers one and two were right, not sure about numbers three and four, quite sure number five was dead wrong, pretty certain of six and seven, had used the only playwright he had ever heard of on eight, had serious doubts about numbers nine and ten, and didn't have the first idea what on Earth or any other planet the bonus was or what the things mentioned in the bonus hint were. Not too disappointing, for a pretest. \n\n
0
Connor Pierce
A New Kind of Class
68
Connor Pierce
0
5
Professor Dione
April 22, 2005 10:39 PM
*sarcastically* Oh dear...How could I do such a thing? by Professor Dione
Dione groaned silently as she noticed Jim, the strange little child from the library who said that space did not exist. Watching him pull out lined paper and colored pencils, she had a slight premonition that his would be the most...interesting example yet. What was she going to do with this kid? How was she going to teach a subject to someone who doesn't believe in what you happen to be teaching?After stalling as much as humanly possible, she eventually reached Jim's seat. She peered over his shoulder at the brightly colored answers, her fears were confirmed; there was nothing about planets or anything having to do with astronomy. It was like reading something in a completely different language. Shaking her head in utter dismay, she continued on, wondering what she could possibly do in this situation.\n\n
0
Professor Dione
*sarcastically* Oh dear...How could I do such a thing?
0
Professor Dione
0
5
Professor Dione
April 22, 2005 11:43 PM
For the loonies, huh? by Professor Dione
Continuing her evaluation of the class as a whole, she passed by another student to view her answers. Overall, the students weren't doing too badly. Excluding a few exceptions, they were all were either average or above her expectations, which was always a good sign.Looking over this specific students answers, she noticed the same common wrong answers, and made a mental note to correct this as soon as possible. Orbits were not round, and Mercury was not the planet with the hottest temperatures. The others were specifically whether a student knew what the question was asking or not, though she had to clear up that Earth was the only planet that supported life. Overall, she didn't do too badly.\n\n
0
Professor Dione
For the loonies, huh?
0
Professor Dione
0
5
Professor Dione
April 23, 2005 12:07 AM
We all have those days by Professor Dione
Professor Dione continued her speech as her eyes followed the newcomer as she walked through the door. She was a couple minutes late, but from the looks of her, she had hurried as fast as she could and was looking a bit ill, so she let it slide for today.After she had given out the instructions and questions for the pretest, she wandered around to look at the various answers to see how early in the material she should start her lessons. From the looks of the papers overall, including the one she was looking at currently, a Mia Kerova by name, they all were decent enough to start right with the properties of the planets. The ones she did not right were left blank, and the blanks seemed to increase as the test progressed. However, when she looked at the student herself, it was obvious that her health might also be a factor. She put her hand on her arm, her touch strangely warm for someone who appeared so cold, to get her attention.
"If you are feeling too ill to continue with class, you may go to the hospital wing. I can have someone take down the corrections for you, if necessary."\n\n
0
Professor Dione
We all have those days
0
Professor Dione
0
5
Adam B.
January 05, 2007 2:15 AM
Then you are really nice... by Adam B.
Adam stood there looking uncomfortable as she blinked at him. Was Briony thinking of him as some kind of disgusting insect she'd rather squish with her shoe than talk to? He hated how moronic he felt, hated having to initiate conversation even if it was just to get back a piece of his object. She must think him terribly annoying. He hadn't meant to bother her."Um, thanks." Adam replied as she gave him back the yellow thing. His cheeks burned as she accidently touched him and his stomach fluttered. He couldn't help noticing Briony was kind of pretty. Not that he had a crush on her or anything. Adam didn't really know her of course. It was just that, he was starting to think girls in general were pretty, he just didn't think about it that much because his mind was on his other problems. After all, why waste his time when Adam knew nobody would ever be interested in him?
Still though, it would be nice to have someone really care for him. Someone to love him unconditionally more than she did anyone else. Growing up, Kaylie had been sort of like that, sort of motherly toward him and now it felt like Adam was losing that. Still, he didn't think his chances were too likely even if Sonora did have more girls than guys. Girls would probably even rather remain single or date each other or share men like the Mormons his grandpa was always swearing about and threatening to kill did than date Adam. He was sure he'd end up alone.
Then again, he couldn't now could he? Adam had to meet someone, carry on the family name, be the heir. It wasn't like his family would pick someone for him either the way some purebloods did. That practice had been abolished in his family in the last generation after what had happened to his Aunt Rachel. Adam gave a small shudder. He didn't want to be like his aunt and be in an unhappy marriage.
Realizing he'd been standing there looking idiotic for quite awhile, Adam blushed harder. "Um, sorry..and sorry if I bothered you!"
Well that was awkward. He might as well cross Briony off the list of future mates.\n\n
11
Adam B.
Then you are really nice...
78
Adam B.
0
5
Connor Pierce
January 15, 2007 12:12 PM
If you say so. by Connor Pierce
Connor was taking Muggle Studies for two reasons, and two reasons only. The first, of course, was that it sounded easy for a Muggleborn, and his GPA, if Sonora even did those, needed the help. The second reason was that it was the one class where the chances of running into Gwen were slim to none. It was all weird and awkward, at least on his end, when they were in the same room, which probably meant talking would go over about like a lead balloon.In the classroom, he found a seat beside a wall and towards the middle back just in case Gwen had been in one of her weird moods while signing up for classes - how hard he was trying to avoid her was starting to get kind of pathetic, when he thought about it, which was why he generally just didn't think about it - and was openly relieved when Williams' assignment of the day worked to sustain the idea that the class was going to be easy. He ignored the bits of the speech that suggested Muggle school, like the books, and wound up catching what looked like a portable CD player when the professor began tossing around the "toys".
A few moments' inspection later, he decided that it was, in fact, a CD player, complete with batteries and a CD, though he didn't recognize the weird German words on the CD. Shrugging, he adjusted the headphones, turned it on, and hit Play. Instrumental music - he didn't know enough about instruments to tell one from another, but thought it might involve strings - came through, the kind of old music old ladies listened to while they were sipping tea or whatever. Hitting stop, he tried to look interested in poking the buttons like he didn't know what they were, the way some of the others seemed to be doing.
A girl began plugging a hairdryer into the wall socket ahead of the one by his desk, something he ignored until the sound of her banging it on the floor made him look up. It took a moment to recognize Anne Wright, a second to panic, and two seconds to realize she was paying no attention to him and it was therefore okay to silently laugh at seeing an Aladren hitting a hairdryer to make it work. He was about to take pity on her and tell her how to turn it on when she either got lucky or figured it out herself.
"Not a heater," he said, catching the end of what she muttered. What was he doing? She was Gwen's cousin, which was bad enough, and she was also tougher than nails from what he'd seen, which was even worse. She probably wanted his head on a platter after the...incident of the previous December. "It's a hairdryer. Muggles use them to make their hair get dry faster when the wash it, and I think girls use them to make it all straight and puffy or whatever. It's good to use one if your sinuses get messed up a lot in the winter." \n\n
0
Connor Pierce
If you say so.
68
Connor Pierce
0
5
Anne
January 15, 2007 1:14 PM
Sure you do... by Anne
"Yeah, yeah, yeah," she said, making a dramatic gesture with the hairdryer. "Blame it all on the girls. It goes back to Adam and Eve and Merlin and Viviane and the Russian Revolution and all that junk. It's always the women." Sarcasm was fun. Entertaining wasn't, but sarcasm was a lot of fun to play with. More fun than the hairdryer, anyway, which was still humming away uselessly. "How many siblings you got, anyway?" Then, before he could ask, "I'm an only child. It's awesome."Her vague thoughts about using the Aquor charm to wet her hair so she could try the hairdryer out went merrily out the window when Colin began describing the music in his CD player. Mozart. It had been forever since she heard any Mozart - or any other music she liked, for that matter - from anywhere except Geoff's violin practice, which just wasn't the same. "Gimme that," she demanded, her voice barely above a reverent whisper, and then tossed her hairdryer at him and grabbed the Mozart before he could say yes or no.
Pulling and pushing at the headphones until she had them where they would fit, she hit the play button and listened. A dreamy smile spread across her face at the music. "This isn't Mozart," she informed him. "Or just 'something'. This is Beethoven's Violin Romance Number two...F major, I think and there's some other stuff I can't remember at the moment. My friend Geoff wanted to learn this, but Master Kirke didn't think he was ready for it...He might know it, now. He's more of a Mozart person, though, since Mozart was a prodigy and all. I'm Bach and Beethoven." If he couldn't distinguish Mozart from Beethoven..."And I'm boring you. Sorry. I ramble."
She endured the alleged music Bella played because that was what a good roommate did, but Merlin, she'd missed hearing things she actually recognized and liked. She felt marginally fonder of Colin just for catching the Beethoven, though she still couldn't figure out what it was Gwen liked about him. Cultured he clearly wasn't, smart was debatable, and he wasn't good-looking enough to set all the girls swooning, either. Apparently, there really was no accounting for some people's taste. Anne, eyes closed, began to hum along with the music, more or less ignoring anything that might have been going on in the classroom. \n\n
16
Anne
Sure you do...
59
Anne
0
5
Connor
January 15, 2007 2:09 PM
Sarcasm really is fun, isn't it? by Connor
He almost missed the sarcastic way Anne was speaking when she brought up Merlin and Viviane. He'd read and reread his half of his and Beverly's collection just to fill up time at Sonora now that he no longer had to talk to Gwen all the time, and had even explored the library a few times, but he could never get used to thinking of people he had always been told were myths or misconstructions being regarded as important historical figures. He wondered how monumentally stupid it would be to ask Anne if the tower-in-the-clouds episode had really happened, or the erection of Stonehenge. Pretty stupid, he decided."Three," he said when asked about his siblings. He had always thought being an only child sounded lonely, and was surprised by Anne's assessment of it. "Two older and one younger. Kristina's the eldest, then there's Paul, me, and Beverly. Paul and Bev go to school back in Texas. Kris is out - she's got a kid. Will was born the summer after our first year." Brad Amberley and his stupid kids were not family, never would be family, and weren't worthy of being mentioned in a casual conversation with a girl he barely knew.
He fumbled the hairdryer, nearly dropping it, when Anne threw it at him and took the CD player. Preoccupied with not getting burned, he missed the first part of her lecture on classical music and picked up enough of the second part to recognize himself as clueless. Who called themselves a Bach and Beethoven person these days, anyway, besides old investment brokers and stuff? "That's cool," he said, not sure if she was even paying attention. "Ramble away - I'm used to it. I'm more of a - uh - Waylon and Willie type, though."
If she knew who they were, then he was going to have to declare her even more surprising than her cousin. While she hummed, he pretended to not know what the hairdryer did and watched the room's other occupants. A Spanish-looking boy Connor thought was the Teppenpaw Quidditch Captain left. He had a brief scare when he saw a blonde, but then realized it was some fifth year girl talking to some fifth year boy who could have passed for one an older version of Connor's cousin Herbert, Jr. In other words, not much to look at except the hairdryer he was pretending, he suspected badly, to not know what was.\n\n
0
Connor
Sarcasm really is fun, isn't it?
68
Connor
0
5
Cassy Brooks
June 28, 2010 9:31 PM
Waking the Dead by Cassy Brooks
Cassy stepped into the classroom first, something that surprised her, considering she was usually lazy and didnt bother until coming last minute. The fourth year sat down, not really sparing the cold a second thought, as it was a nice change from the searing heat, and glanced at the Ouiji board before her, wondering if the lesson really was what it seemed.As she listened to the Professor speak, her spirits soared. She couldn't believe it! She was given the chance, one last chance to speak with her mother again! Oh, whoever was willing to be her partner better believe in these things, if they didn't it wouldn't work, and she wanted, no needed, to speak with her mother again, even if she couldn't hear her voice.
Cassy thought of her mother, her head resting in her hand, a smile on her face as she drifted down memory lane. She could remember the woman's laugh, oh it sounded like bells, and how she always had a goofy smile and was so interested in magic. Whenever her father would come over, he would always dazzle her with simple magic tricks and then large ones, and he always explained to her how it was done, and how the wizarding world was.
The woman was obsessed with magical fairy tales and unicorns. Ugh how she hated them! She laughed to herself. Her mother would decorate her rooms with unicorns to the point where she had gotten sick of them, and on her tenth birthday she flat out refused to have them in her room any longer. She had begged her mom to let her change it as a birthday present. Though it mattered little. Her mother had died that year.
Cassy sighed. She loved her mother. Dearly. She missed her smile, and the way her eyes would sparkle when she laughed. She missed the way her mother would hold her when she was sad, and scold her when she was a bit rebellious. But most of all she missed how happy she had been, and how happy her father had been, with her mother around.
She ignored the person sitting next to her as she wiped the tears away. She stared at them dead on as she said,
"My person will be my mother." She said this with such finality, there was no room to disagree with her, not that they would. It was her spirit."What of you? Who will you try to contact?"
0
Cassy Brooks
Waking the Dead
0
Cassy Brooks
0
5
Dana Smythe
July 07, 2010 4:50 AM
Out of my comfort zone by Dana Smythe
Divinations was turning out to be a fascinating subject. Dana's father wasn't especially impressed that she'd decided to study a subject with no real purpose, as he'd called it, but he didn;t mind simply because she was a girl, and therefore was allowed to indulge in frivolity every once in a while. It was amusing to Dana how her father could be so relaxed and progressive in some ways, and totally traditionally narrow-minded in others. It didn't really matter; she knew he loved her, and that was enough for the Pecari.Nevertheless, he certainly wouldn't approve of their class today. He was a firm believer that if spirits wanted to remain in contact with people they would stay on this plain as a ghost. If they want to die peacefully, that was their choice. Hence any sort of spiritual magic - especially ouija boards - was strictly forbidden. Dana made a mental note to keep this class a secret and she made written notes on the assignment. She didn't know anyone who had died that she wanted to contact, so she supposed she would leave that up to her partner. Who, apparently was going to be Cassy.
"Oh, um, I don't have anyone to contact," Dana said, surprised at being spoken to so abruptly. Although she'd been sharing a room with Cassy since the start of term, Dana still didn't know the other girl very well. She did know her well enough to know that she did look a bit upset right about now, but then as she'd just said she wanted to contact her dead mother, Dana was hardly surprised. "We can just try for your mother, if you like," she replied.
0
Dana Smythe
Out of my comfort zone
142
Dana Smythe
0
5
Marissa Stephenson
July 21, 2010 4:05 PM
Having a problem. by Marissa Stephenson
Where there was smoke, there should be heat, or at least a memory of warmth. Smoke was the product of fire, which was hot. For the smoke swirling around her lower legs to somehow be even colder than the rest of the freezing-cold room was something that could not happen, which meant it had to be some kind of odd psychological trick.That was what Marissa assured herself of as, shivering and wishing she had brought a heavier jacket and worn a sweatshirt no matter how bad she looked in it, she sat down in Divination. She knew that elementary school, even one with as much emphasis on allowing the Gifted to stretch their boundaries as hers had been, did not give accurate pictures of anything, but she did think that the basic physics lessons she’d had about fire were accurate enough for her to say that smoke came from chemical reactions that produced heat, and her regular observations were enough to make her think this was definitely smoke and not fog or mist. Fog was wet, this was not.
For one moment, she was tempted by the professor’s offer of something warm, but then he mentioned the “if you can’t do it yourself.” It was stupid to be proud, when everyone in the room would have probably bet against her being able to do it herself if they thought about it, but she couldn’t bring herself to admit to the failing. Rubbing her arms one last time, she focused on appearing as unaffected by the cold as the professor. It was just a trick, if an impressive one; she had read about how to do it, though it was too hard to maintain the double focus and do the lesson, so she could only refuse to huddle in on herself and hope nobody noticed that her nose was looking a little blue. She was from Georgia, and while it did get cold enough for her fingers to go numb if she stayed outside more than a minute or two, that didn’t happen very often except late at night and early in the morning, and on the maybe one day a year it did come a real ice storm or proper snow, she never did stay out in it longer than it took to take a few photographs while she was heavily bundled up.
When the candles came down, she didn’t recognize the thing attached to the table in front of her, but she did jump a little at the word ‘departed.’ From there, it didn’t take long to put two and two together and realize what was going on.
This was the kind of witchcraft that made her grandmother look at her warily and, on occasion, sigh about how it was the End Times, and which made her aunt say, sugar-sweet after church, that she wasn’t sure Marissa should have taken the Lord’s Supper with the rest of the family or attended certain holiday services. It was also dangerously close to disturbing or disrespecting the dead, which – though more of a cultural than a religious matter – was possibly even worse in the eyes of everyone she had grown up with. The dead were to be celebrated, remembered, and revered. Two of the very worst things that could be said of a person were that they did not care for their children properly and that they did not put flowers on the graves of their relatives. To call the dead back from their rest would very likely break both the religious and cultural strictures.
When they were sent to work, Marissa looked at her apparent partner. “I don’t know anyone who’s died,” she said, feeling a moment of profound relief that even her least-favorite relatives were still among the living, “and – “ she had to fight back a half-hysterical laugh; how many times had she been taught never to use stock phrases when she was still in Muggle school? Serious as this was, she suddenly couldn’t quite help herself – “I’m pretty sure this is against my religion.”
16
Marissa Stephenson
Having a problem.
147
Marissa Stephenson
0
5
Alison Sinclair
July 21, 2010 4:08 PM
Surrendering the lead. by Alison Sinclair
Chill bumps broke out all over Alison’s arms and legs beneath her clothes, and the dark came as a shock to her eyes, but she only hesitated slightly before continuing her walk into the Divs classroom. The soft leather of her new boots was warm enough to protect her feet from the added chill of the low-hanging smoke, and a few warmth-enhancing garments were among the first inanimate-to-inanimate, non-associated object Transfigurations she had ever learned. It was no more than a practicality where she came from.Since some level of affiliation did help hold the things in shape longer, though, she used her long, red cloth pencil case – a gift from her mother; it was no good for quills and ink, but she carried a few ballpoint pens and, yes, pencils in it out of a vague sense of sentiment – to make a long, red scarf, which she promptly wrapped around her neck and pulled her dark hair out of. Red was a good color for her, and it didn’t clash with what she already had on. Sliding out of her tan coat, she didn’t so much Transfigure the entire thing as she did the lining, making it thicker and the materials better suited for an extended time in the outdoors this felt like. Since she already had gloves, if not thick enough ones, and a muff wouldn’t do much good when she had to work with her wand, she took a foam-rubber tube from around one of the mechanical pencils she’d taken out of the case before it became a scarf, a thing meant to make gripping the pencil easier over an extended period of time, and used it to make a red hat to match her scarf. That might not last the class period, but it would do for now.
Once her gloves were on and she felt at least adequately insulated against the cold, she began to look around the room more critically. Dark could mean anything, as could cold, so Alison kept her attention on the smoke. She was familiar with cold fires, of course – they were, among other things, useful for communication in summer, when a hot fire would have been awful to deal with for even a few minutes – but couldn’t see one, which ruled out pure heliomancy or whatever it was called. Maybe they were studying the patterns in the smoke, she knew there was a branch of Divination connected to that, but why, then, was it so low to the ground?
Because it wasn’t the point, of course. She had only seen one once before, when she and Tessa and Iris had thought to have a séance using Iris’ mother’s when they were about ten but had chickened out in the end, but she recognized the Ouija board once there was enough light to see it by. She looked at Professor Linn with a hint more respect than usual. This – funnily enough, considering the nature of the class – wasn’t something she’d seen coming.
She contemplated trying to conjure up her dead grandfather, but dismissed that as pointless; she’d only met him a few times, when she was very small, and had nothing in particular that an old Muggle man would be able to advise her on. Her biggest concerns in life were whether or not she should ask her Head of House about taking additional CATS exams, which was okay for talking about but not really any good for her grandfather, and what had happened last summer, which was not something she intended to chat with anyone about in front of Average Joe Sonoran and was also not really any good for her grandfather.
Ah, well. She couldn’t say she was that eager to talk about her exams, anyway. Let someone else go first this time, someone who might actually have something and someone to ask. She looked over to her nearest companion. “Want to work together? You can go first.”
16
Alison Sinclair
Surrendering the lead.
140
Alison Sinclair
0
5