Waxing Phase, over here on Elective Hall

Professor Declan Chatterjee

February 17, 2011 10:05 PM

Advanced Astronomy: Phases of the Moon (Part I) by Professor Declan Chatterjee

Declan had to admit it; he was a little nervous. After all, it had been years since the Irishman had taught a proper course. Then he'd been here, at Sonora, before his sister's death, before he adopted her daughter, before he really properly grew up--and since then he'd done nothing more than substitute for a week once at Hogwarts, when their Astronomy professor had fallen prey to a particularly impressive prank played by a couple of sixth-years. One week in eight years was not enough for even the best teacher to keep up on his skills.

Yet here he was again in Arizona, preparing to fill young heads with knowledge once more. Get them ready to face life head on and whatnot. Yes, that's what he was doing, chin up Deck old boy. …Merlin, he was talking to himself again. Admittedly it was only in his head but it still wasn't the healthiest habit in the world. He really should stop that.

When faced with a classroom full of fifth and sixth years, though, it was hard not to fall back on old, comforting habits--or at least, he'd tell himself it was the students doing it. In reality, he'd found himself muttering aloud (occasionally to his demon cat, Twitch, which his parents had refused to allow to stay in their Phoenix home) ever since he'd first come back into contact with one Aaron McKindy, distracting sod that he was. All right, no, he was not going to think about him now… he had a class to teach.

He looked around the room. He'd charmed the ceiling to mimic the current night sky, even when it was daylight out, which kept the Astronomy room swathed in a sort of twilight dimness that he combated with enchanted lanterns around the edges of the ceiling that he could extinguish with a quick wave of his wand, though for now he had them glowing bright enough that all but the brightest stars above were drowned out. Normally light pollution bothered the bejaysus out of him, but he supposed it was all right in the classroom, given that it would help if the students could actually see their books and whatnot. Well, there was no point in putting it off any longer… Deck tugged at the collar of his gray, striped button down shirt before turning a bright grin on the students.

"H'lo, class," he greeted them, his Irish lilt sounding even more pronounced than usual after listening to Americans so long. "Right, well, I'm not sure how your other professors do things, but you can call me whatever you like, so long as there's no profanity in it. Professor Chatterjee, Professor Deck, Deck, Chatterjee--'s up to you." He rubbed his hands together, pacing a little in front of the rows of desks. "Right, so, as I understand it you've been rather at a loss for a consistent astronomical education, which really is a shame. It may not be the most thrilling or glamorous field in magical research, but it is one of the oldest. Our ancestors--magical and Muggle alike--have worshiped, feared, admired and stood in awe of the heavens for as long as man's existed. They scheduled their lives and counted their histories and planned their futures by celestial objects long before we had planners and PDAs and magical clocks."

"This year, we'll be focusing on one of the most eminent of those celestial bodies," he said, stopping in front of them with a smile still on his face, this one less nervous and more excited. Deck genuinely did love his field. "Now, I know that in recent decades the Moon's been somewhat stolen by the hokier neo-pagan bull--" Ohright, no swearing in the classroom. "Ahem. Right, well, they might've bollocked it up with their quasi-magical new age… anyway, there is a legitimate reason that the Moon is so closely associated with magic, and that's what we'll be studying."

"For you older lot, we'll be taking a slightly more clinical approach. As I'm sure you know by now, the four main phases of the Moon are associated with different types of magic; the theory is that spells performed under the corresponding phase will be more potent. For the purposes of this study, we'll be splitting into four groups--one for the full Moon, one for the waning full Moon (that's when its left side is visible), one for the new or dark Moon, and one for the waxing half Moon, the one on the right."

"Right, so, you've got a slip of paper on your desk that says which group you're in; divide up and consult your astronomy books on the qualities that your phase augments. That should be in Chapter Seven. Next, I want you to pick a spell that you think exemplifies the type that corresponds to your phase."

"Make it a spell you can do without too much difficulty now, because you'll be performing it a grand total of twelve times over the next three months. That's right; each one of you in the group will be performing it at each phase of the moon for three months, and then rating it qualitatively--make note of how it felt to perform the spell, how effective it was, and so on. You don't have to get together as a group to do it as long as you don't forget."

"Now," he said, grinning at them, "hop to. Feel free to rearrange the desks however you need, and I'll be around to ask for help if you need it."

OOC: This class is for fifth and sixth years. Pick whichever phase of the moon you like! Normal posting rules apply.

Subthreads:

Waxing Phase, over here by Daniel Nash II, Aladren (HB)

Waning Phase, over here by Jose Hernandez, Pecari

Full Moon people, please converge here by Marissa Stephenson, Crotalus

0 Professor Declan Chatterjee Advanced Astronomy: Phases of the Moon (Part I) 0 Professor Declan Chatterjee 1 5

Daniel Nash II, Aladren (HB)

February 18, 2011 1:17 PM

Waxing Phase, over here by Daniel Nash II, Aladren (HB)

There had been a substitute in Astronomy for the first part of the year, but he'd heard the position had gotten a permanent teacher recently, and sure enough an unfamiliar face met them as they entered the classroom. Daniel had been uncertain if he wanted to continue with Astronomy, and the fact that they only had a sub at the beginning of his RATS training hadn't made that decision any easier to live with, but he hoped this new professor would settle his uncertainties.

He liked Astronomy. That was why he was still in the class. He just wasn't sure the time required for it was worth the time it was taking away from his core subjects that carried more academic prestige. But, so far as he could tell, colleges liked people who were versatile more than specialized, so he hadn't dropped it even after Fawcett made it clear potions was going to be a very heavy workload.

Chatterjee seemed more informal than Daniel really liked in a teacher, but he seemed well invested in his subject, which Daniel respected. He thought he'd stick with it, at least until potions started kicking his butt more than it already was.

Plus, if the three month long assignment only dealt with casting only little spell once for every phase of the moon, he didn't think it was going to take a huge bite of time out of his schedule. DADA might be the better course to drop if five RATS courses got to be too much to keep track of.

He looked at his slip of paper, and found the word "Waxing" on it. Not a bad phase, astrologically speaking. Growth. Improvement.

Standing up, he tried to figure out who else might have that phase, but decided the best way was to just call out, "Waxing Phase, over here!" and wave his slip of paper (enlarged, so it was easier to read from a distance) over his head.

1 Daniel Nash II, Aladren (HB) Waxing Phase, over here 130 Daniel Nash II, Aladren (HB) 0 5

Jose Hernandez, Pecari

February 18, 2011 3:34 PM

Waning Phase, over here by Jose Hernandez, Pecari

Jose was a little worried about Astronomy once he learned the professor's name was Declan Chatterjee. There could not be a lot of people named Declan Chatterjee in the world, especially ones who taught Astronomy at Sonora.

There were very few professors left who remembered Saul Pierce. The tiny handful that did had already had quite a few years to understand that Jose was very different from his cousin and Jose felt confident none of them thought of Saul when they saw him anymore. Fawcett looked at him and saw 'that vegan kid' which was something the potions professor had never needed to deal with from Saul (if Fawcett had even been there for Saul, which Jose wasn't sure about anymore). McKindy . . . might not even know Jose was a California Pierce. It didn't come up as much in Charms.

It might in Astronomy. And Saul actually talked about Professor Chatterjee. Saul didn't often talk about teachers, so if Saul was talking about one, they'd probably made a pretty solid impression on each other.

Which meant if Saul ever came up, Professor Chatterjee would probably remember him. And the easiest thing for a professor to remember about Saul was that he was a terrible student.

Jose was going to have to put in a lot of effort in this class, just to counter the bad family karma again. So he took better-than-normal notes, and made it very obvious that he was attentively listening throughout the entire lecture, and otherwise did his very best Aladren impression for the teacher's benefit.

He looked at the piece of paper telling him which group he was in, and went to go find the rest of his team. "Waning?" he asked people as he mingled into the crowd of people also doing the same thing, "Are you from waning?"

0 Jose Hernandez, Pecari Waning Phase, over here 0 Jose Hernandez, Pecari 0 5

Marissa Stephenson, Crotalus

February 19, 2011 1:57 PM

Full Moon people, please converge here by Marissa Stephenson, Crotalus

She had, as Professor Chatterjee noted early in his speech, taken it in a scattered, confused sort of way, but Marissa had been studying Astronomy for two years, and she thought she had done well in it. Well enough, anyway, for the ‘Advanced’ tag to not plunge her into the same horror it had with Charms and Defense, or for her to completely despair of passing it despite the visions of super-advanced math dancing in her head. Numbers weren’t her strongest point, but if they were explained clearly enough, then she could master them, and she’d spent enough time doing measurements for Fawcett and studying real math for her mother that she thought she should be able to follow along if she tried very hard. And it had been a long time since doing anything else had been an option.

So she wasn’t expecting the class to be easy, but nor was she expecting to have to quite kill herself the way she did with Charms. When she heard that Charms was being brought into Astronomy on a long-term basis, Marissa dropped her quill and half-opened her mouth to cry foul before she realized that would be a very not good idea while she was still making an impression on the new teacher.

Okay, Marissa, think. Be smart. She was smart. She wasn’t a very good witch, but she was smart, and that meant she could think her way to making the situation work for her. She had been doing that for four full years, now.

Every subject, sooner or later, involved magic. Even Potions and Divinations did, sometimes. They usually weren’t in huge, term-long projects, but they occurred, and she had gotten around them before. That was why she wasn’t going to panic, even if she couldn’t just have Quentin do it this time instead of having to cast the spells herself. She might even be able to find a way to make things work better for her, if she could line spells up with moon phases where they worked best and then find substitutes for other times, like in her economics workbook. So that was a reason to not even see this as a very bad thing. And Professor Chatterjee had actually said the spells they picked shouldn’t be too difficult, so that was good. It would have been better if she’d been picking her group instead of being assigned it, so she could get together with the other weak students and everyone be in agreement about a simple spell, but still. It wasn’t that bad. She could handle this.

Feeling better in the wake of her logic, she flipped over her assignment sheet and found she had the full moon. She knew there were a lot of uses for that in potion-making, so maybe there would also be a lot of variety in other areas? It was worth hoping.

As a prefect, she supposed she was as good a rallying point as any, especially since she’d heard Daniel calling the waxing phase over to him. So she took out her wand (she could do some magic, and was very proud of it) and wrote “Full Moon” over her head in the air with it while calling the same thing, just to be sure, even though it made the sorting-out of the room even more chaotic.

16 Marissa Stephenson, Crotalus Full Moon people, please converge here 147 Marissa Stephenson, Crotalus 0 5