The scientific method on Herbology

Nathan Xavier

December 28, 2019 3:55 PM

Intermediates: Wand Woods by Nathan Xavier

As was his habit, Professor Nathan Xavier stood at the door to his greenhouse and greeted each student as they arrived and returned the graded homework assignment they had turned in last week. For a change, not a one of them had crayon scribbles on them. Once everyone had arrived and taken seats around the central worktable, he greeted them as a group. "Welcome back, today we'll be starting our unit on wand woods. Wands can be make from nearly any kind of wood, but similar to how only a minority of people can produce magic, only a minority of trees have wood that can conduct magic. It is very difficult to tell the difference between a mundane tree and a magical tree, as they are outwardly very much alike, just as wizards and muggles are very much outwardly alike, but there are a few clues wand makers can use. The easiest is bowtruckles. If there's a bowtruckle nest in a tree, it's a wand quality tree. They don't nest in mundane trees. Other markers are much more subtle and take years of experience to really learn to recognize with consistency. Unless you go into wand-making, nobody is going to expect you to learn those methods."

"What you will be expected to know are some of the characteristics of wands made from most of the common wood types. But first, I want you each to consider your own wand. How long is it? Is it springy or unyielding? Do you know what wood it is made from? Please write a short paragraph describing it and note what kinds of spells it seems to do best with and which kinds it has trouble casting. For a wand to choose you, you probably have similar strengths and weaknesses in spell casting. Note this is for practical spell casting, not the understanding of theory. Some people are just naturally intuitive with some branches of magic, and your wand will more reflect your practical talent than your ability to write essays explaining what's happening, and even then individual wands vary. This isn't for a grade, just a quick write up before you're influenced by what should-be."

He gave them some time to write that up, and then collected the papers before continuing. "Now we're going to go over what the different wand woods are known for and you can check to see if your wand matches up to its hype or if your wand chose you for a different reason than your natural spellcrafting talents. Wand cores can have just as much influence as the wood, so that may have been your more compatible match if your strengths are different from those of your wood."

"There are a lot of different woods used by wandmakers around the world, so I'm going to pass around a handout with a quick explanation of each type." He waved his own wand, and a pile of papers flew around the room, one sheet landing in front of each student. "I want you to spend some time reading these over, especially the one corresponding to your own wand. If you don't know your wand wood, raise your hand and I'll try to identify it, or you can try to figure it out yourself based on these descriptions. For homework, I expect a research report using your text and the library to get more information about your wand's wood. Your essay should cover the common traits for your wand's wood and how well you feel your wand meets - or doesn't meet - those expectations."

"For today, though, I want you look to see which other woods on this list you think might be compatible with you. If a witch or wizard has to replace their wand for any reason, their second one is not always the same wood as their first, so you do not have to consider the one you currently have as the only one appropriate for you. You may talk amongst yourselves, considering the possibilities presented by all of these wood types. On Thursday, we'll start talking about the properties of each wood more individually and comprehensively. Today is just for familiarizing yourself with the ones most likely to be drawn to you."

"On the side tables, I have some retired wands made from many of these different wood types. You may try casting some simple spells with them, to see how they might different from each other and the wand you normally use. Don't be too concerned if some of them don't work for you at all, as some wands remain loyal to their past owner, and others simply won't work for people they find too different from their ideal owner." Each wand was labeled with a small adhesive tag wrapped around its base so it was easily identifiable.

As the students began reading and then moving toward the sample wands, Nathan took a position near where he'd placed the more volatile woods that were likely to protest the wrong handler with fire or other disasters, his own wand ready to set his greenhouse back to rights or protect the other students if necessary.

OOC: Most information used in this lesson comes from the hp wiki: http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Wand_wood
In the case of sparks or other violent reaction to a mismatched wand, you have permission to have Nathan step in and avert a disaster, or you can tag me.

Subthreads:

You're telling me this now?! by Evelyn Stones with Julius Astley

This turned out to be a loaded assignment. by Jessica Hayles with Felipe De Matteo

Languages cause the weirdest problems. by Katerina Vorontsov

The scientific method by Ness McLeod with Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

Of luck and longing. by Nathaniel Mordue

1 Nathan Xavier Intermediates: Wand Woods 28 1 5

Evelyn Stones

December 28, 2019 11:50 PM

You're telling me this now?! by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn tried really hard not to glare at Professor Xavier. On the whole, she liked the new father, and Herbology was one of her favorite subjects by far. But today they were talking about all the wand stuff that Evelyn hated so much about all of her other classes. Beyond that, she had a hawthorn wand, and this information sheet made the whole thing seem like a cosmic joke. Why the heck had this been the wand she'd been paired with? Professor Xavier asked the class to write about their wands generally seemed good or bad at, but how could they tell the difference between what they were good at vs what their wands were good at? Or bad at, as the case may be? Her wand hardly managed any magic at all; most of what Evelyn had done over the course of her life would be best described as "leaking," or else as some sort of magical conduit version of a stove top. She was a burner.

She'd gone shopping for her wand with her parents. But . . . well, she'd gone shopping the summer before she was supposed to have gone to Sonora, not the summer before she actually had. Things were less terrible then. At least, less terrible than they were the next summer. She went wand shopping before everything in her life blew up at once, a thought that made her skin crawl, and she couldn't help wondering whether her magic had just broken. It was a theory she'd been considering more and more since talking with Kir over the summer, and it was a theory that she suspected she needed to talk to Professor Wright about. If that was the case, should she have had a different wand? She stared at the piece of wood, wondering whether it was a friggin' traitor.

Still, she was trying not to be so negative about this stuff, and she couldn't just grump her way through class, even if she wanted to. Plus the idea of trying out other wands - particularly when her own wand was apparently ill-suited as heck. But she didn't exactly want to do that alone, so she looked around to see whether anyone else would like to work with her. She looked naturally toward Ness and Heinrich, but she also looked toward others in her class. There were lots of faces here now, especially since the Intermediate classes had three years of students, and she was pretty well resigned to the fact that her classmates were aware of her lack of magical proficiency.

Normally, she might have been tempted to work up the nerve and approach someone. In this case, with a cosmic joke on the table in front of her, she decided it would be best to let fate decide for her. She looked around for another moment before returning to study the table the professor had passed out, reading about the other wands listed there.

22 Evelyn Stones You're telling me this now?! 1422 0 5

Jessica Hayles

December 29, 2019 5:23 PM

This turned out to be a loaded assignment. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica took her paper back from Professor Xavier with a smile, before she even turned it over to see the results on the front. She was confident that the score would be at least very good and quite possibly perfect. Herbology was, even with the occasional gross bits, easily her best class at Sonora.

Taking a seat, she looked over the page and found that she had, indeed, once again done a homework assignment without any mistakes. Even in her other classes, she had always done well on the written work, even if only through regurgitation, especially in her first year. Now, she supposed, the written work might take some actual mental processing, at least some of the time, but she wasn't too worried about that. Writing was the one thing she thought she could still learn new skills in even without proper instruction; the written word was something which had always made sense to her, at least since she had learned to read and write, which composed all of the time she could clearly remember. She didn't remember what it was like to not know how to read, and she didn't want to. The world would be nightmarish without her books and poetry to escape into....

Her eyes wandered toward another third year for a moment, and her mouth twisted at the memory of a conversation from last year. Why, she wondered, had she not realized that they were going nowhere during that conversation, where he had seemed so complacent about the idea of people just living in a rut because they couldn't read and write? That was some messed up colonizer nonsense. If Jessica had been born as one of the De Matteos' serfs, she thought she would have jumped off a bridge by now, and she did like to think, even now, that that would comprise some small loss to the world.

It was hard, lately, to see a sheet of paper and not try to work on some of the more difficult ideas she'd had lately - she had gone through five drafts, some utterly different from the others, that she'd titled "The Other" - but she restrained herself, feeling too exposed in the greenhouses, with their transparent walls and benches that kept her even closer to her classmates than was usual. She did write, in her very tiniest handwriting, the phrase 'party in a greenhouse' in the margin of the top clean page of her Herbology notebook, but other than that, she kept focused until Professor Xavier began to speak.

Wand woods. Jessica raised an eyebrow slightly, genuinely interested in something for once. She was not entirely comfortable with wands even after all this time, but she remembered the difficulty with finding one - how she had had to keep trying them out, like shoes from a new brand which used an atypical sizing scheme. Perhaps that was going to begin to make a little more sense.

When instructed to write about her wand, she obediently thought back, trying to remember what she had heard about her wand's components and dimensions. Fir, she recalled - she remembered that because firs were the ones that made beautiful, fragrant Christmas trees. The wood itself, brought out from beneath all those green needles, had surprised her with its color: it was a light wood all around, though not perfectly consistent in tone, like someone had pulled stripes of maple syrup through a band of pale honey. She had always been sorry that the finished wand did not have any particular fir fragrance; Christmas was Jessica's favorite season for scents, and she had sneaked a couple of Christmassy candles into her trunk to burn through the semester when she needed comfort even though most of the time she was at school wasn't even that close to Christmas.

The other things...unicorn hair, that was easy enough to remember, because she remembered having a fit of giggles upon hearing that unicorns were real, assuming at first that the wandmaker was joking. She knew there had been a specific phrase used about its flexibility, though - slightly springy, maybe? She'd go with it, anyway.

She wrote all this down in a neat, to-the-point bullet list, then paused over the next part of the assignment. What kind of spells was she particularly good at? None of them, really...

No noticeably greater performance in one class than another, she wrote finally, deciding that was a better way to put it. She made another bullet point under that and added, More practical spells in many classes, since she did tend to pick up things she could see the point of a bit more quickly than the more outlandish-seeming stuff.

When that paper was handed in and the handouts flown out, she scanned the (thankfully alphabetical) list until she reached F, and then blinked. Staying power. Strength of purpose. Not good with the changeable or indecisive. Was that what she was like? She tried to think...she had felt adrift for so long now that it was hard to remember what she'd been like before, but she certainly did not do well with change. Her first year was a vivid testament to that! Particularly suited to Transfiguration - she didn't think she was that, really. The kind of transformation she was best at involved making people prettier with make-up, not her wand. Focused, strong-minded, and intimidating demeanor...she could not see herself from the outside, could she, so she might need to ask someone else about that, though she'd have to play it off as a joke, of course...

This ought to make an interesting essay, she thought. Before that, though, there was the second task for today - thinking of what other woods might suit her. She went back to the As and started reading.

Acacia...well, that definition was nearly useless, wasn't it? Most gifted at what? Since she definitely wasn't the most gifted at magic, though, she thought it was safe to assume that one wouldn't work for her. Alder - she thought she was considerate, but history suggested she was not terribly likable and so she disregarded that one too. Apple - no. Just no. High ideals were for idiots and children. Ash sounded promising at first, but Jessica was absolutely certain that she didn't have a courageous bone in her body. She panicked too easily.

The Bs and Cs held little of note, but she put a checkmark next to Elm for further consideration. Another went to Hawthorn, because the whole last three years had certainly been a time of turmoil for her. Hazel, though, sounded frankly dangerous, as she was not very good with controlling her emotions. Masking them sometimes, yes, but not controlling them....larch sounded like one that she could probably benefit from, but she had no idea if it would actually work for her, as it was more about the wand somehow changing the user than the user being pre-compatible. She drew a straight horizontal line next to that one. Spruce was rejected as hastily as Hazel, with another twist of discomfort - what kind of psychoanalytical nonsense was this? If she wanted to talk about her feelings, she'd tell her parents to hire her a psychiatrist, not go to her Herbology class. Vine sounded interesting, but also rather pretentious to mark down (though she did so anyway). Willow...her finger hovered over that on the page. She had her share of insecurities, for better or worse, but she had no interest in telling Professor Xavier about them. If one of the retired wands he had on the side table was willow, then she might try it out of sheer curiousity, but she was not going to write about it and let the world know, in unfiltered, unpoetic terms, that anything made her question herself at all. That would be off-brand to a truly ludicrous extent.

She reached the end of the list and rolled her shoulders. "That was a lot of information," she remarked to her neighbor. "Did you find many maybe-matches?"

16 Jessica Hayles This turned out to be a loaded assignment. 1442 0 5

Katerina Vorontsov

December 30, 2019 12:03 PM

Languages cause the weirdest problems. by Katerina Vorontsov

Herbology was one of Katya's favorite subjects, and so she offered a less American-than-usual smile to Professor Xavier as she took her homework back, though her expression rapidly became one of mild surprise when she realized that there were no stray marks that looked like Dora Xavier's on it. That was highly unusual on Herbology papers, and she wondered if the little girl was well. Professor Xavier did not seem excessively concerned or distracted, though, so she decided it was safe to assume he had done some marking while his daughter was with her mother or something instead and she proceeded to her seat, looking over the feedback on her paper to see if there were any places where she had made some grammatical or spelling error which had distracted from meaning. With those, she sometimes could get back a point or two, depending on the teacher and the assignment, so it was always worth a look.

Today, however, her score seemed fair (she was annoyed with herself over a stupid error she had made - what had she been thinking when she did that?) and so she put her homework away and got ready to take notes. The topic took a moment to filter through, but she looked up with interest when it did, and when she realized their assignment.

She knew quite a lot about her own wand, which she thought was normal. Orekhovoye derevo, she could hear the wandmaker telling her, as though it were yesterday. The specific piece of wood came from the Crimea; the best groves for this wood came from near Simferopol, though there were also respectable sources in Yalta. It had the tail hair of a unicorn in it. It was about twenty-seven centimeters long and it was quite springy. She thought she was better at Charmwork than other things, but was reasonably strong in all subjects.

She had all the information, she thought, to do the writing assignment. There was just one problem: she had no idea how to say Orekhovoye derevo in English.

She looked at the paper, then at Professor Xavier. Paper, Xavier. Paper, Xavier. She sighed. He had said it wasn't for a grade, so she thought it would be all right to write it down in Russian and hope for the best. She included the information about the Crimea and Simferopol, too, even though she had no idea how to write those in English and it was possible that he would think she was just writing gibberish instead of actually answering the question. Hopefully, she thought, that would be the end of discussion of their specific wands - if she had any luck, he would accept that she knew what she was writing about and check off the participation grade and that would be fine.

She did not, it seemed, have any luck.

She looked over the dauntingly long list of wand woods, all of which were labelled in English. The part about figuring out which ones sounded anything like her might be easy enough - she read English well enough to understand the descriptions - but how was she supposed to figure out which one of them was which? At least in class. In her room, she had more extensive books in both languages, and could always check Professor Brooding's shelves to see if she happened to have an ingredient book which could help if Katya's existing sources failed. For now, she decided to look like she was reading for an acceptable amount of time (since it would take her far too long to really read all of this in English) and then to go over to the wand table and experiment and see what data she could glean from the wands he had available for them to try.

Over there, she took out her own wand and held it beside some she thought looked similar, wondering if she could figure out a translation that way before she realized that wood was typically glazed and polished and finished, any one of which could prevent its color from looking the same between two wands made of the same wood. Clicking her tongue, she put away her wand and picked up one - a beautiful wand made of some deep red-colored wood; its varnish felt wonderful beneath her fingers - almost at random, slowly sounding out the name in her head. See-dar. Cedar. She pointed it back toward her desk and tried a simple hovering charm, and grinned in delight when her notebook rose into the air.

"It works!" she crowed to someone else who was working with wands. "And I do not think it is my usual wand type!" At least, it did not look like her usual wand at all, which was a much lighter color, a soft sandy pale brown only a couple of shades away from the color of her hair. Not at all like the color of this wand.

16 Katerina Vorontsov Languages cause the weirdest problems. 1418 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 04, 2020 1:52 AM

Get used to disappointment. by Felipe De Matteo

It must have been an accident, because Felipe and Jessica had not spoken to each other more than the few words required in class since the start of term. Well, since summer really. There had been no letters. There had been no contact. At least not between them; Felipe was reminded of his contact with another student every time he tried to sit and found his backside still bruised from tripping over his own stupid trunk. It was an embarrassing injury but it helped some to know that the worst of his bumps and bruises were not caused by Jeremy, but by dumb luck.

His dumb luck seemed to have carried with him to his favorite class, which was really a shame. If it had to happen anywhere, he would have preferred not Herbology. And also not this lesson because it was really interesting. As it had happened, Felipe had taken a seat on the other side of a student who had then gotten up, leaving Jessica and Felipe closest to each other for the first time in what felt like a very long time. She looked good, and when she looked up at Felipe, for the brief moment before she realized who she'd accidentally spoken to, she even looked happy. He couldn't very well ignore her now, and there was some part of him - maybe a big part of him - that didn't want to.

"My wand is mahogany," he said stiffly, pointing at the description: The mahogany tree symbolises strength, safety, protectiveness, and practicality. It felt sort of arrogant somehow to try to pick out other maybe wands. He thought elm maybe sounded possible, but was that because he just liked to think that of himself? Or because those things were true about him? If he was being realistic, holly seemed a good fit right now. He had also made a mark next to pine, and that one seemed like a bit of his good and bad. He felt likewise about vine and walnut, but doubted he was particularly unique enough to be deserving of either. "I'm not sure that I found any strong maybe-matches. You?"

22 Felipe De Matteo Get used to disappointment. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

January 06, 2020 7:37 AM

Already done that. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica reached up to grab the pendant around her neck and slide it anxiously back and forth on its chain around her neck as soon as she realized who she had inadvertently spoken to, though she quickly put it back down, hoping to pretend she had just been adjusting the way it was situated around her neck.

"Maybe," she said levelly, refusing to act as if anything was wrong before he acted as though anything was wrong. "I put check marks next to elm and hawthorn." She wasn't sure if she should have mentioned the hawthorn, but had decided to go for it for two reasons. One was that she was still slightly hoping they could patch things up somewhat, and admitting that turmoil was a feature of her life - at least indirectly - might help with that. Another was that she had actually made a mark on the paper and didn't want to get caught in a lie. That would not only be especially awkward in current company, it would also be just plain stupid. Sometimes things happened, but Jessica prided herself on not being stupid enough to walk into a situation like that without noticing.

She looked down to the description for mahogany and read it over. She resisted the temptation to say that practical, at least, did not seem entirely suitable for him. "And my actual wand is fir," she added. "It seems like a reasonably good match. Did you find any weaker maybe matches?" she asked.

She wondered if too much would be read into the fir description - if it was a statement of being too stubborn to reason with. She hoped not, on the whole, at least in present company. Despite what she had said to Sadie about everyone in her year being a jerk, she did privately agree that Felipe had had a point. She knew that the way she and her family behaved was wrong - not having an unconventional structure, that was nobody else's business, but the way they handled it publicly was a different thing. It wasn't right and Jessica hated it. She did not, however, consider it fair of him to throw two years of friendship out the window over it, and felt he had gone too far in what he had said to and about both her and Mara. That meant there was a middle point where they admitted there had been bad behavior on both sides and moved on, if he was willing to approach it.

16 Jessica Hayles Already done that. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 06, 2020 2:07 PM

Well...... Good. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe was very proud of the fact that neither of his eyebrows formed the quizzical arc they wanted to as he looked over the explanations of elm and hawthorn. What was she playing at? Little Miss Perfect Life was going through turmoil? If it was in any way due to him, she really should have thought of that before. Before everything. There was no end to the number of ways Jessica had screwed things up for Felipe, and he found he had little patience for that. It was when he read the description of fir that he only managed to stifle is scoff, not completely subdue it.

"Sorry," he said, his cheeks reddening some and his hand coming up automatically to run through his hair. However angry he was with Jessica, however far away he felt from her, he certainly didn't want to be another Jeremy of the world. "I just . . . wouldn't have expected that."

Eager not to delve into exactly why 'staying power' and 'strength of purpose' weren't exactly the two phrases he would have used to describe his former friend, Felipe turned his page to point to the woods he had put a checkmark beside. "I thought elm, too, or maybe holly," he said with a shrug, his voice more tense than cold now. "I'm not sure whether I would be the best judge of that, though," he admitted.

Old habits died hard, he supposed. He would have strongly preferred not to open up to Jessica. Not to share anything at all with her. But that just felt so foreign, and it was true; he was pretty sure Zara would have done a much better job picking out other possible matches than he would himself. He wondered what to think of the fact that both he and Jessica apparently thought of themselves as dignified and sophisticated. He really would prefer to just be human, but he wouldn't dare expect so much from her.

22 Felipe De Matteo Well...... Good. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

January 06, 2020 5:42 PM

I'm certainly doing better than you right now. by Jessica Hayles

Jessica's face burned red, far redder than her hair, when Felipe almost openly scoffed at her announcement about her wand wood, and she cut her eyes sharply in his direction even as one of her hands curled around the opposite arm, allowing her fingernails to dig into her forearm to help her regain control of herself.

"You had an idea what wand you expected me to have, then?" she asked, struggling to keep her tone level again, and this time not succeeding in keeping all traces of an edge out of her voice. She was a little hurt by that remark; she might have failed, and admitted it, at long last, but she had clung to the hope she could have a life despite all this for as long and as hard as she possibly could. He knew that, too. She wasn't prone to giving up or giving in or changing when she didn't want to. It was all these occasions in the past few years - coming to Sonora, then finding out Mara was a witch too - which had forced her off track which made her think she might be able to use a hawthorn wand!

This was what she got for thinking there was anything to gain from growing close to outsiders. To opening up. Really hadn't meant anything to anyone else - and, to be fair, why should it have? She tossed her hair over her shoulder.

Lesson learned.

She remembered the properties of elm for the most part, but had to look back down her own list to read over holly again. "No, I'd say you did a good job of judging this one," she said. "With the holly, anyway." She supposed she could use help with anger herself, but not with impetuosity. She had hardly ever behaved impetuously in her life and hadn't enjoyed the times she had slipped up. It was a sucker's game and she preferred to avoid impulse as far as possible. Things just worked better when there was a plan, a straight path to follow, and no messy feelings or lies or Selina Skies messing everything up.

Of course, she was acting off-plan right now, wasn't she? This whole conversation wasn't supposed to happen. She had also planned to be nice, but after that scoffing incident...she flushed again. "Honestly, most of this is such generic mumbo-jumbo that we might as well look up horoscopes," she said. "Who doesn't need half of that?"

16 Jessica Hayles I'm certainly doing better than you right now. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 06, 2020 8:42 PM

Eh, you seem like you're not doing great. by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe stared in silent shock as Jessica bristled and then fumed and then almost raged. Almost because she wouldn't rage. She couldn't. That's not what people like them did and Felipe knew it as well as she did. Which of course made it all the more embarrassing that he had lost his temper at someone. However, it also meant that Professor Skies had not told Jessica exactly what had happened, even if she did ask her about her interaction with Jeremy. That was . . . bittersweet. He wasn't sure why.

For a moment, he really just wanted to insult her. She had not risen above the temptation herself; why should he? But he was going to be better. He had to be better. He wanted to be better than all the people that made him feel small, and all the people who made underprivileged people feel small. So he took a moment to actually think about it.

"Redwood," he replied after skimming the sheet again to find the wood that had come to mind. He did raise a disbelieving eyebrow when she said that holly seemed apropos, as she didn't know about his anger in any real way, and there weren't many people in the world that would call him impetuous. He knew that much about himself. Leonor? Sure. She was impetuous. But him? He erred on the other side. Which meant Jessica was being emotional. That hurt.

Before he could say much more, she said something that almost had him seeing Jeremy's point. She said she wanted science and this was science in a lot of ways, so why was she dismissing it? And horoscopes? There was literally a class at Sonora called Divination, and it undoubtedly covered horoscopes. He supposed the muggle versions were less reliable, but still. Why would she flat out dismiss evidence and logic just to spite him? Just to appease her emotions? Also, plants were cool and wand would was amazing and she was wrong.

"I think the fact that we have these wands and not others shows that it's not nonsense," he replied quietly, afraid to sound mocking if he repeated her words back to her. "You don't have to rag on this stuff just because you're upset with me."

22 Felipe De Matteo Eh, you seem like you're not doing great. 1434 0 5

Jessica Hayles

January 07, 2020 9:33 AM

I didn't say I was, did I? by Jessica Hayles

Jessica scanned down to redwood and raised her pencilled-in eyebrows. "I wish," she said. "You of all people should know how well I've done that. Or are you mocking me now?"

She had intended her aside about the generic mumbo-jumbo as a way out, a softening of the remark about holly, but it wasn't received that way. She supposed it could be a language and culture issue - Felipe's English was excellent, but learned, and everyone knew that people from other parts of the country were customarily ruder than Southerners, except maybe people from Minnesota or the Dakotas and other flyover places like that. Subtlety and delicacy didn't count for much in, say, New York or Boston - or at least, so she had gathered. Jessica had never interacted with anyone outside the family on her own when they traveled, which meant she had mostly said a few words in tightly controlled settings with a parent's hand on her shoulder. People obviously would act somewhat differently if they were acting on their own.

Knowing she had been misinterpreted rather than malicious, however, did nothing to make her like the situation any better. "Considering the noise you made when you heard the wand I have, you don't sound like you have too much faith in it yourself," she said. "And look at - " she scanned a few. "Yew. The power of life and death. It says right there next to it that it's basically superstition, since you can do things like that with any of the wands, if you're into that," she said. "Or vine - doesn't everyone seek a purpose in life? Or do I just not understand how life is for everyone else?" she challenged him, almost daring him to say that no, most people just wandered through life without a care, much less any concern for why they bothered getting out of bed in the mornings.

16 Jessica Hayles I didn't say I was, did I? 1442 0 5

Julius Astley

January 08, 2020 2:15 PM

Telling you how boring this is? by Julius Astley

Julius was not a fan of Herbology. The plants of the magical word held no interest for him, unless he was throwing them into a potion but even then, he felt that in that instance, he only really needed to know their magical properties. He certainly did not need to know how to grow them or cultivate them. If he needed a plant, he could go to an apothecary. That's what they were there for. So, Herbology was written off as boring and uninteresting and useless and Julius was going to make sure he dropped the subject as soon as he possibly could. Today's lesson only further solidified that decision.

Wand woods. Something else Julius had little interest in. Why on earth would Julius Astley need to know about wand woods? He had a wand. He had a very good wand. He liked his wand. He had no intentions of losing, breaking or having his wand stolen from him and even if any of those things happened, he could go to a wand shop and get a new one. Again, proving Herbology was utterly useless.

With a grudging sigh, he quickly scribbled down the characteristics of his wand, muttering about what a useless exercise all of this was.

Unyielding, darkly coloured and elegantly carved, unicorn hair core, made of rosewood, twelve inches.

He had no interest in using any of the other wands that had been laid out as an experiment. What a foolish thing to do. Why risk causing an accident, practicing with a wand that wasn't his own when he had one that was perfect for him. That seemed irresponsible on Professor Xavier's part.

"Isn't this just a complete waste of time?" he complained to Evelyn, hoping that she would share in his annoyance and boredom.

20 Julius Astley Telling you how boring this is? 1425 0 5

Evelyn Stones

January 08, 2020 10:25 PM

I'd love if that were the worst of it. by Evelyn Stones

Evelyn was snapped out of her mid-grade panicking by Julius complaining. To be fair, he did this fairly often and she normally didn't mind because it was just how Julius approached the world as a whole. It certainly wasn't her favorite trait about him, but she figured she could osmosis some good into him rather than trying to confront it directly. When she was feeling so completely off kilter, though, it was harder to understand where he was coming from. Plus this didn't feel like a waste of time if it meant she found out she was better suited to a different wand.

"I don't know," she replied noncommittally, shrugging as she looked up at him. When had he gotten so tall? When did all the boys in her class suddenly get so tall? "I mean, maybe we'll learn something really interesting." And completely life altering. She resisted the urge to tell him what a toad he was for calling her saving grace a waste of time. Unless of course it turned out that she was a lost cause, in which case she was inclined to agree.

"For example, I've just learned that my wand - it's hawthorn - thinks I have 'proven talent,' and we both know that's not true. Or is it true and my wand is smarter than we are? Isn't that crazy to think about?" She dismissed the part about conflicted nature and turmoil because that was not a conversation she wanted to have with Julius, no matter how close they'd gotten over the years (and they hadn't gotten very close). "It seems like this stuff is getting at some next level magic theory." Okay, maybe she'd spent too much time with Professor Wright's books.

22 Evelyn Stones I'd love if that were the worst of it. 1422 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 08, 2020 10:40 PM

You sure are something at least. by Felipe De Matteo

Okay, what was Jessica's deal? Felipe would admit that he hadn't been very nice to scoff at her wand, but he also had apologized for it and hadn't otherwise been a jerk about anything. Being angry to spite him for weeks of separation hardly seemed fair when it was her own stupid fault. Untrustworthy people couldn't be mad at other people for not trusting them.

"I'm not mocking you," he replied, keeping his face straight. If he could get through this without losing his cool, than at least Jessica would be the only one letting her emotions get the best of her and he wouldn't do any more damage than the fact that he was apparently sooo inconvenient already had. They could get on with ignoring each other for the rest of their lives.

She really really didn't make it easy to get on with her though when she went off like this. She was smart and she could do much better than she was doing. Felipe was a bit concerned that she had apparently given up on at least trying to look like she had it all together and he wondered whether that meant she did have it all together now and was trying to own it, or whether everything was worse. Then he reminded himself that he didn't need to waste energy on that, and then she said some more stupid stuff, and he couldn't help scowling anyway.

"I have a lot more faith in this than in you," he returned with biting sharpness, shaking the piece of paper in front of him. His voice was crisp and clear and left no doubt that he was royally pissed off. "Believe it or not, I was not surprised that that wand chose you, I was surprised that you have so massively failed to display any of the traits it thought you had." He closed his eyes and retreated some, aware that he was losing his temper again. That fact just served to make him angrier as he already felt out of control with life and didn't need to feel like he couldn't control his own emotions either. That was basically the only thing he had going for him at this point.

Leonor had been disappointed with him when he'd been upset at Jessica's house over the summer, and he supposed that had been a matter of losing emotions, but still. He had done his best to be the bigger person then, and he didn't want to give in to just every temptation that came along his way. The last thing he wanted to be was Jeremy and he was getting painfully close to that when he let himself lash out. Felipe didn't think too much about the fact that Jeremy was generally a fairly stoic person - a trait they did share - or that he was turning a snobby adolescent into the manifestation of all things awful. It was just easier to blame somebody else and he looked a lot better if he held himself up to Jeremy than to Zara or his family.

"I'm sorry. I'm not trying to be rude." He took a breath and consciously relaxed his shoulders, which had found the habit of sneaking upwards and tightening up until his neck hurt recently. "Do you want me to just work with someone else?"

22 Felipe De Matteo You sure are something at least. 1434 0 5

Julius Astley

January 09, 2020 1:35 PM

If only one could escape this hell. by Julius Astley

Julius looked down on Evelyn as she talked. Literally. Had she grown at all or was he growing too much? It was true that men in the Astley family were all tall, imposing figures. Forgetting that for a moment, he frowned when Evelyn didn't agree with him on his boredom. Why was she interested in this rubbish? Did she have a desire to become a wandmaker or something? An odd choice of profession but then in all fairness, Julius had always considered Evelyn to be somewhat eccentric so he wouldn't really be too surprised if that turned out to be the case.

"I doubt we'll learn anything," he muttered, rolling his eyes. He'd much rather be in the library, drafting the layout for the next issue of The Aronos. It was due out soon and would be a much better use of his time. Or he could be getting further ahead on his homework for Charms or Defence Against the Dark Arts. They would also be a much better way of spending his time. This lesson was just tedious.

"It'd be strange for your wand to be ill-suited to you..." he commented. "If it is wrong for you, then the wandmaker you purchased it from is an idiot. Perhaps consider shopping elsewhere and getting a new wand."

Julius didn't always remember that not everybody had the same wealth that his family did and could buy new wands at the drop of a hat.

"You must have a talent in something or you wouldn't be here at Sonora."

He also wasn't the best at offering words of comfort either.

20 Julius Astley If only one could escape this hell. 1425 0 5

Jessica Hayles

January 09, 2020 1:49 PM

I'm a lot of things. by Jessica Hayles

"I have a lot more faith in this than in you."

Jessica blanched with shock as that blow landed, her face - already quite fair - going whiter than ever. Her eyes burned, though, and she quickly averted her face. She'd be damned if she ever gave any of these people the satisfaction of seeing her cry over anything they said or did - and seeing as she had resolved to figuratively tell them all to go to hell, because she didn't need any of them or any of their approval, being damned was not something she planned to be, as that would - if she pretended she had meant it literally - stick her in their company even longer.

"That's a distinction without a difference," she said, focusing on the rest of what he said about wands, her voice a touch thick with the already not entirely successful effort she was making to prevent it from wobbling, looking fixedly at her notes. "And I know you're smart enough to know it. I haven't forgotten everything else I ever knew about you just because I've found out there's another thing about you and that it's something I don't like," she added bitterly.

She shrugged her hair over her shoulders when he offered to go away. "Sure. Run away. You're good at that."

16 Jessica Hayles I'm a lot of things. 1442 0 5

Felipe De Matteo

January 10, 2020 7:47 PM

Like a liar? [Tag Professor Xavier] by Felipe De Matteo

Felipe felt bad. He knew he'd been rude. But also he didn't feel bad because so had she. And now she wanted to play all high and mighty? His stomach clenched, knots making him feel nauseous. "That sounds convenient," he snapped quietly, not giving himself permission to be loud or angry again. That was one emotion he'd get under control if it was the last thing he did. "It must be nice to know that I'm still the same person. I might be on the same page if you hadn't lied about who you were for two years. You're right; I didn't like that about you."

Good at running away? Him? The guy who couldn't get out from under his last name, let alone anything else? How about the girl who literally pretended she didn't have a sister until it was convenient and then arrived at school and started owning up to it? Like she wasn't running away from everything. That's all she'd done since they'd met. If Felipe had had anything to offer, he would've thought Zara was right to think Jessica was only his friend for what she could get out of him. As it was, he wasn't sure whether it hurt more that he had lost his friend, or that he was glad he didn't have to be friends with the person in front of him now. "Bye, Jess."

He snatched his paper and belongings from the desk they were sharing and shoved them in his bag so he could head to the wand testing table without having to come back here afterwards. Walking away felt worse now than it had over the summer. It felt final. This was a period, not a semi-colon, and Felipe was more sure than he'd been before that he had well and truly lost one of his best friends. His cheeks were warm and his throat felt sticky, as if he might throw up. In fact . . . he was very sure he was going to throw up.

"Professor Xavier," he asked, his face pale and splotchy with residual shame coloring his cheeks red. "I don't feel well. Could I be excu--"

Felipe leaned forward and vomited the entirety of his last meal onto Professor Xavier's shoes. It was almost impressive how badly it hurt to throw up at this point, although he wasn't sure whether it was his bruised stomach or bruised ego that hurt worse.

22 Felipe De Matteo Like a liar? [Tag Professor Xavier] 1434 0 5

Ness McLeod

January 15, 2020 4:24 AM

The scientific method by Ness McLeod

Wand woods was not a subject that filled Ness with enthusiasm, unless it was the enthusiasm for rigorously debating whether or not it was all hokum. Well, all except the bowtruckles. Wands really could be made of almost any tree but not almost any tree could make wands (and anyone who tried to say the opposite was commiting some kind of logical fallacy and Ness was honestly more interested in looking up what the name for that was than doing this), and bowtruckles really did like hanging out on wand trees. The lecture started out practically and factually enough but it quickly went downhill from there.

Wand wood and personality was next to divination, as far as the Aladren was concerned. It all seemed a bit woolly and vague enough that people could really read whatever they wanted into it. Case in point, they were looking at their own wands and whether they matched the descriptions. But, if they didn't, maybe it was because it had chosen them for a different reason, or maybe it was the influence of the core. Basically, this was a subject that had license to say what it wanted, and if that was demonstrably inaccurate, there was always a get out. They also had an alleged 'research paper' that involved writing even more about the superstitions around their own wands. Ness would definitely see if there were any papers available debunking the whole idea that could be worked in.

There was a lick of interest in the possibility of trying other wands but given that these were labelled, it all still played into people being swayed by their preconceived notions. It definitely did not have the rigours of a double blind trial. Zevalyn had introduced this concept to Ness' world view over the summer, and Ness was keen to apply it, with something of the degree of vigour which, to someone with a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Ness wondered whether it would be possible to set up a proper scientific experiment for this. Magical people were so vested in the mythical concepts of wands choosing and caring about personality that, even if you presented unlabelled wands, their own belief that it wouldn't work would be enough to scupper them. How did you control for what was going on inside people's heads? Could you tell them a range of wands were made of their preferred wood and ask them to try them out? Lying was generally not a good way to achieve things, but could you lie for science? Also, what if what was in people's heads was what made it go? So much of magic worked via belief and intention. Ness very much wanted to be able to boil it down and look at it in scientific terms, but was it possible to get properly scientific about a field where, for want of better insight, sticks really did seem to have opinions about the people who waved them? Except obviously they didn't. But they kind of did. Or the people's belief that the sticks had an opinion mattered. Or something.

Maybe after class Ness would write to Zevalyn to discuss it. Owlie often dropped off letters for Evelyn too, so if Kir was allowed to write to Ness' humans, then Ness should be allowed to write to Kir's too. And Zevalyn was cool, and Ness thought they were kind of friends and definitely wanted them to be. Much as with any attempt to get Gary's attention, the idea of 'being friendly' was not distinct from 'ramble about science' in Ness' head - though with other Aladrens, it possibly didn't need to be. Gary would also be a potential person to discuss this with. Except, well, obviously he had studied all of this before. He might think Ness needed homework help or it might remind him that Ness was stuck down in intermeidates whilst he had reached the lofty heights of advanced classes, where he probably wasn't even taking anything as unacademic as herbology. Two years was not, in the grand scheme of things, a huge age difference but it felt like it right now. But maybe if it was clear that Ness was trying to reach beyond the limitations of the homework assignment and into the realms of designing scientific experiments... Surely he would have to be impressed? But maybe Ness should get a more solid hypothesis, just to be on the safe side.

Ness made some wand/self related notes. I am better at charms and transfiguration than Defence but that could just as easily be because I dislike violence. I also find the theory more interesting, which feeds into wanting to do well in those classes. Ness considered whether to add that it was hard to get a wand wood that matched, because no one had paired a particular wood with a desire to overthrow the patriarchy or with believing that wand woodology was bunkum. The latter probably verged too close to insulting the professor, but the former went in.

Ness tried to make the response detailed and make a good go of the written because there was an inate need to exceed minimum expectations and impress teachers, whatever the assignment, but Ness couldn't quite face making it devoid of personality or opinion. And that was fair, given that this whole subject was opinion based. For once though, the Aladren was keen for the written to be over and to get on with the practical.

Ness went over, carefully not looking at the labels, and picked up a wand, trying not to make guesses based on colour. It helped that Ness could neither remember what colour most trees were nor what characteristics most of the wand woods were meant to have. Regrettably, that might need beating in there for the sake of passing an exam... But for now, it was experiment time!

"Wingardium leviosa," Ness cast, pointing at a nearby leaf and trying to channel the usual feelings of balance and control. The leaf, gratifyingly, fluttered a little bit into the air. So, there. Confirmation bias was b- wait, damnit.

Ideally, what was needed was a ranking order of how someone else thought Ness would do with the wands, and then for the Aladren to try them without knowing what they had decided or what the wands were, and to be able to objectively measure the result, like looking at how high the leaf floated. That sounded like enough blindness. Evelyn was already chatting with Julius, but she was really the only one who would be able to help. However, before Ness could go interrupt, someone came over.

13 Ness McLeod The scientific method 1419 0 5

Nathaniel Mordue

January 18, 2020 4:34 PM

Of luck and longing. by Nathaniel Mordue

”First, I want you each to consider your own wand.”

Enough of the directions which followed that one stuck between Nathaniel’s ears for him to know that he was supposed to write down his considerations, but he didn’t start doing that right away. Instead, he took out his wand, turning it between his hands before lying it down on the table before him, so he could look at it while he considered it.

It needed a polish, he thought. It didn’t look as shiny as it had the day he had bought it. He had not, thankfully, ever allowed it to become damaged, but it needed a polish now. He considered using the sleeve of his robes but then decided it would be a shade too undignified to do that in the middle of class, especially when he was supposed to be writing. Writing about his wand. He would not write down that the reddish-gold wood needed a polish, as that was immaterial, but beyond that...

Hawthorn, he wrote - that was the wood. He didn’t know its exact provenance, though he knew that hawthorn grew in Oregon, because there were hawthorns in the gardens at home. When he had been very young, Nathaniel could remember calling them snow-bushes, because when they came into their full bloom in late spring, the clusters of little white flowers would so dominate the exterior of the plants that they looked like evergreens covered in snow, with only flashes of green leaves peeking through.

His mother had loved that name – snow-bush – almost as much as she loved his name for the gardenias – perfume-trees. She had said that he should grow up to be a poet, but by the time he had been old enough to write, he had lost the ability to express himself or anything else very well with words. Instead, he had learned to take photographs, and while his favorite early photograph was one of his mother - her hat off and all her attention on a book as she’d rested on one of the garden chaises near the gardenias – the first really good studies he had done had involved the hawthorns. With a slight adjustment of focus and saturation, they really did look like snow-covered monuments in the midst of the full green grass and comparatively abundant spring light, with little birds all about the garden and other things in flower around them. Then came the fruits, later, black on some plants and red on others; then the birds had really flocked to them, and Nathaniel had had to learn to be absolutely still and silent if he hoped to get a shot. The leaves, too, had changed, going red and gold, which was particularly striking on the plants with black haws...his mother had never much liked the jam that could be made from haws, though several times she had been put on regimens which required her to eat a spoonful of it two or three times a day, as it was good for her heart, and for preventing fluid buildup when she felt very poorly and spent a lot of time lying down.

It was, Nathaniel thought, the perfect plant to describe his family with. The hawthorns were beautiful on the outside, both flowering and fruiting, but just beneath the surface they stank of festering death, and it took next to nothing to break the illusion and bring that aspect of it to the forefront, clouding out the delicate blossoms and deep-hued fruit. It was almost too on point; they ought to adopt the thing as a badge – and everyone else was suddenly moving again, passing their papers in. Too rattled to even swear in his head, Nathaniel hastily scrawled his name on the paper which still bore only one other word – hawthorn – and passed it along. It wasn’t, he supposed, as if he was all that talented at anything anyway.

A handout came to him in return, and he skimmed along the endless boxes of text until he found the letter H. There it was. Healing magic and curses. Well, wasn’t that nice. And in the language of flowers, hawthorn represented hope – the thing that kept you going just so it would hurt that much more when it all fell apart anyway, he thought bitterly. Though as he turned it over in his mind again, he did find it curiously comforting – this idea that he could choose which way he would go. He could not help being caught in turmoil almost all his life, now, one way or another, but the implication here was that this did at least mean he wasn’t predestined. He wasn’t doomed to be like any of the sorry excuses for role models he’d had. He could do it better – if he was strong enough. And he had to be strong enough, since there was no-one at all to do it for him anymore, so therefore, he would.

What other woods might work? He looked over the list. Apple and cypress appealed to his ideas about himself – his ideas about what he wished he was, what he thought he ought to be - but he wasn’t sure he deserved them. Perhaps ash. Parts of ebony worked – he was not one to change with every wind – was he? He thought he had always tried to stick to what he knew was right, but last year, Sylvia had acted as though he had been the one prepared to abandon what was right -

He didn’t want to think about that, though, and anyway, he hated always feeling so separate from the world, as though there were a glass wall between him and normal people – people whose fathers didn’t run from their responsibilities, people whose mothers were chaste and healthy, people whose uncles didn’t destroy their whole lives, people who didn’t feel as though there was an unspannable chasm between their knowledge of the world and that of the next closest person. He didn’t want to be an individual or outsider. He wanted to be so much part of something that he didn’t know where he ended and it began, the way it had been with Sylvia...before. He just couldn’t seem to manage it.

Elder was unlucky, but he wasn’t exceptional in any field of magic, so that wasn’t likely, even if Professor Xavier could somehow have gotten his hands on one. Elm...well, his dignity had been gone for a year already. No. Hazel sounded like it might explode if he touched it. Hornbeam was out – he was pulled in too many directions to have a single, pure passion, though he thought that in another world, photography might have been that for him. The corner of his mouth twitched upon seeing the description for ‘larch’ - there was no way to say who it was supposed to work for, but he could use its alleged effects. Laurel was out – he didn’t want glory. He wanted revenge and to feel better, neither of which glory could help him with...words began to swim around for him, but he forced himself to concentrate. Maple, pine, and pear seemed unlikely. Red oak and redwood and silver lime, ditto. Spruce was a bad idea; he wasn’t sure he’d had much of a sense of humor before he’d gotten sick. He didn’t have time. Sycamore and walnut, no...that left him mahogany, poplar, rowan, vine, willow, and...yew seemed unlikely for part of the same reason as elder, but its description, aside from the part about owners being notorious, didn’t sound entirely dissimilar to hawthorn – curses were something the wand took readily to, the morality was up to the user. He considered willow for the same reason – it lent itself to Healing, and that was one of hawthorn’s options. Vine...he thought he had a purpose, was that the same as seeking one? In any event, though, he had certainly surprised everyone who had ever thought they knew him best, he though, with possibly one exception. For rowan, he didn’t feel very pure-hearted, but wanted to be good at defensive enchantments – he wanted to protect his family. Poplar – he wanted to be a person of integrity. Once, he’d taken pride in the thought he was. Maybe he still did, though it had involved a bit of looking sideways at it.

And then there was mahogany. Protection. Safety. If he could just provide those things to his family, then, he thought, he could get better – really better. His nerves would be able to step off the stretch they perpetually resided on. He would be able to breathe, and to work on trying to help Jeremy more, and they could both get better. That was too much to put onto a wand, though. Too much to hope for from anything. The associations made him favorably inclined anyway, though.

No amount of favorable associations, however, much improved the thought of handling discarded wands. He wasn’t sure where he had heard that it was bad luck, touching a wand which had clearly belonged to someone who had died or been disarmed – perhaps it had been Sylvia, she might have gotten it from a novel, or perhaps some adult had told them both this when they were younger – he couldn’t remember and it didn’t really matter. The salient point was that he really thought he had enough bad luck as it was without doing anything to court more of it.

He looked over at the table of discarded wands, trying to force his thoughts away from the idea of death and the dead and the dishonored. Of how Professor Xavier, of all people, had somehow gotten his hands on this many old wands. Instead, he took out more paper and a pen, hoping to look like he was making notes on wands to put off shuffling over to interact with them.

It was possible, he thought, that he might get away with spending the whole class doing nothing – that he could simply look like he was doing this or that until class was over, while really he was just allowing his mind to drift; homework was only about his actual wand, after all, not wands generally, so he didn’t really actually need to do anything – but before he could get too optimistic, someone made noise in close enough proximity to him that he looked at them automatically, terminating his chances of slipping into a waking dream before they could even begin.

He should have expected it, he thought. Luck. He just didn’t have any. It was best to accept that life would nearly always go the way he didn’t want it to, that way he would have fewer surprises and more of them would be pleasant ones.

16 Nathaniel Mordue Of luck and longing. 1412 0 5

Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

January 19, 2020 5:24 PM

R.O.S.! Wait uhh S.O.S.! by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

Johana Leonie didn't have any idea what her wand was. That was not a factor that was taken into account when she'd acquired it, as the Zauberhexens only begrudgingly used wands anyway. Their magic was focused in the little charms that just sort of existed, more than they were cast, and the sorts of healing spells and mixtures that made people all over the world believe in magic, even if they didn't know it was real in this sense. Johana Leonie's wand had come from a box that her parents kept with all the donated wands they'd collected from travelers over the years, and all the wands of relatives who had passed away, and all the wands of travelers who had passed away in their care and asked that their wand be kept in use. Did that mean her wand wasn't actually the best fit for her? It had worked out so far, but she'd never tried anything particularly incredible with it either, much preferring the more hands-on subjects of Herbology, Potions, and COMC.

Other students were writing and working and moving about, and Johana Leonie let herself panic momentarily before picking the first smart person she saw and approaching them. Lucky for her, Ness had also always seemed nice and she seemed like the sort of Aladren that would both have answers for Johana Leonie's questions and also not judge her for having those questions in the first place. The problem was going to be getting the questions out at all

"Das ist sehr gut!" Johana Leonie said as she approached, watching the leaf Ness had charmed flutter back to its place. "Can you . . Ähim . . . can you help me? I can't . . . I don't know . . ." She held her wand out for inspection. "I am not knowing what wood is it. I am not first Hexe. Not witch one."

22 Johana Leonie Zauberhexen R.O.S.! Wait uhh S.O.S.! 1432 0 5