Don't get confused about it, Intermediates. on Charms

Grayson Wright

March 11, 2020 3:02 PM

Don't get confused about it, Intermediates. by Grayson Wright

In theory, the Intermediate students were supposed to be coming into their own as young witches and wizards. They were allowed to know about more and more dangerous forms of magic and trusted to use the knowledge wisely. They were given more control over their schedules, adding classes to their basic diets according to their interests and aspirations. At the oldest end of the group, a select few even held official leadership positions, responsibility for helping the staff keep the school running smoothly. In theory, the Intermediates were not yet adults, but they were young adults, no longer children who needed excessive handholding or sheltering.

In practice, this...was actually the case, most of the time. There were hormones, there were tensions between friends, there were Quidditch rivalries and furious battles for prefect among the fourth years and such, but on the whole, the Intermediates of Sonora were not a bad bunch and did not behave too recklessly with the greater degrees of knowledge and autonomy their promotion to third year and up gave them.

On the whole, however, was still the key phrase. Looking at the broad picture, the assertion was true...but there were exceptions.

The third year Crotali, of all people, had become some of those exceptions. Gray saw relatively little of it himself - the greatest differences he had noticed were that Felipe De Matteo had recently apparently gotten adventurous with his hair and that he and Jessica Hayles no longer seemed to be on friendly terms - but he had heard about the fight between Felipe and Jeremy Mordue, and about Felipe very shortly thereafter vomiting all over Nathan's shoes. Jessica, for the most part, floated along as though nothing had happened - the only real change in her behavior he'd noticed was that she seemed to have taken half the first year girls under her wing for reasons unknown - but the rumor mill had it that she was somehow involved; given the tales - heard both when in contact with his more society-oriented associates at home and somewhat around Sonora last year when Jeremy's brother had had a breakdown - about the Mordue family, Gray suspected the fact Jessica was Muggleborn had at least something to do with why the boys might have come to blows over her, or over Felipe's association with her.

It was the stuff of novels, really - prejudice and politics, honor and anger, possible romantic disappointments, school year hurtling toward the Midsummer Ball, the whole thing. Unfortunately, it meant that Martin Crosby - who was so quiet that Gray had wondered in his first year if the boy had some speech impediment - was the only one of the lot who had yet to somehow associate with foolishness this year, but they all had to be taught. The curriculum was meant to enable them to operate at least somewhat autonomously in the adult world even if they did not take RATS level Charms, and that meant teaching them some things that angry teenagers sunk into drama might well want to put to unauthorized use. It was in a somewhat wary mood, therefore, that Gray welcomed the Intermediates to the class in which he was going to teach them how to Confund things.

It was things, too, because he had never been overly fond of the school of Charms pedagogy which encouraged having the children cast many charms on each other and this was doubly true of charms which could send said children into fits, depending on temperament and such. As such, he had three medium-sized boxes in front of him, their lids firmly on until it was time to allow the students to remove items from them.

“Hello, everyone,” he said. “If I can have your full attention for a few minutes?

“As you should all know by now, one of the main aims of your Intermediate classes is to ensure you have enough skills in all of your core magical subjects to live reasonably successful adult lives regardless of which classes you choose to keep and drop when you move on to Advanced work. Part of that includes teaching you certain skills you may or may not need to help maintain the Statute of Secrecy.”

Here was the part he really would rather not engage with even under the best possible circumstances. This class, he knew, was not only apparently developing drama – it was a class with a lot of…personalities and circumstances. There were the Mordue brothers and their cousin, who certainly had their views on politics warped even further than was usual for pureblood children by their experiences. On the other hand, there were Ness McLeod and Zara Jackson, whose families were involved in liberal activism. Neither of these situations quite accounted for Felipe De Matteo and Katerina Vorontsova and Johana Leonie Zauberhexen and the Hexenmeister siblings, whose views might misalign even with others of their own social status because of their cultural backgrounds. This was before he thought about Evelyn, who he regarded as rather fragile and therefore best kept away from anything that could go political at all, and the Muggleborns in the class, who would doubtless be hideously uncomfortable with parts of this, and….

Well, this was not going to be pleasant. But so it went.

“I know you may have a variety of opinions about the Statute of Secrecy,” he said bluntly. He had simply been brought up on it as a fact, but he knew this was not always the case – there were those who passionately felt it was the most important law there was, and there were those who thought it ought to be abolished. He did not know the exact leanings of his students on this issue, but suspected he might soon find out. “Some of these are things you may address in your next essay assignment, which will discuss the laws and ethics surrounding the use of the charm you’re going to learn today. That will be due in two weeks; take an assignment packet from this box as it goes around,” he instructed them, waving his wand to send a second, already unlidded box around the room, pausing before each student. Third years needed to compose at least 500, fourth years at least 700, and fifth years at least 1000 words (Gray was not concerned about whether they used sheets or scrolls, but remembered enough about school to know that setting length in those terms was a bad idea; handwriting was an amazingly adaptable thing, as was spacing, so word minimums worked better) on the topic, with a minimum number of references equal the year group of the student – three for third years, four for forth, five for fifth. The packet also included a rubric, a blank outline they could use to develop their ideas, and a copy of the text of the Statute of Secrecy, topped with a note clarifying that yes, it could be one of their sources. “However, the Statute is currently the law, and it’s important for you to understand your rights and responsibilities under it, and the consequences for some violations.” Which was really why they ought to have a whole class just on law and ethics and history, he thought – as they had, when he was in school, though preferably with less…interesting teachers than had been present in those days – but ah, well. If it was perfect, it wouldn’t be a school.

“You can read the copy of the Statute that’s in your packet when you have time, but the core of the law is that all witches and wizards of age to carry a wand are responsible for taking reasonable measures to prevent Muggles from learning that wizardkind exists,” he explained. “Usually, this means not doing magic where you think Muggles might notice you, keeping magical beasts out of sight of Muggles, and not talking about our world when you are in the presence of Muggles, but sometimes, you may have to take some action to keep everyone – including the Muggles in the situation – safe.

“If you look on page 367 of your textbook, you’ll see the story of the Ilfracombe Incident in a text box,” he informed them. “That was an extreme case, with a dragon landing on a public beach, and it involved memory charms, which we don’t teach in Intermediate Charms – come back for Advanced for that. If a situation is ever so out of control that memory-wiping is necessary, the best thing to do is contain the situation as best you can and get word as fast as you can to the nearest government office – they’ll send professionals who are trained in handling these things without injuring the Muggles. Something you might need to use someday, though, is the Confudus Charm, which you can find back on page 361.”

He gave them a moment to flip back to the right page. “This spell causes a variety of effects, all of which are short-lived,” he informed them. “Very strong spells may actively cause confusion and disorientation, the way the name implies, but an average use will cause a very brief flash of amnesia – that means forgetting what happened – “ he added – “and will make the person it is cast on briefly very suggestible. You cannot usually make someone do anything they would not normally do in that interval, but you can tell them that something did or did not happen and they will usually believe you. If someone sees a crup puppy which still has its tail, for instance, you can cast a Confundus Charm and tell the person ‘you didn’t see anything unusual’ and they will most likely believe you.

“I assume it’s apparent why your homework is going to involve talking about ethics,” he said. “Let me be clear, however – if you start casting this spell on your classmates, or anyone’s pets, or any member of the staff – including elves – there will be severe consequences. Do not test us on this,” he said flatly, as severely as he had ever said anything to a class, that he could recall. “Over the next few days, you will practice the charm – the incantation is confundo, and you point your wand at the target and make a circular motion, generally in the direction of the target’s head – on chess pieces. Magical objects which have at least something like a mind – portraits, arguably photographs, and chess pieces like these – can respond to the spell along with humans and animals,” he explained. “Third years, pawns tend to be the least creative, so you will start with them. Fourth years, work with bishops. Fifth years, you get the knights.” By the end of the unit, he intended for all three levels to work on harder pieces than they were today, but it was a starting point. “Your task is to put the piece – “ technically, he had read, pawns were not pieces, but he could not remember the source and did not want to go on even longer talking by using the correct terminology when for all he knew, no-one else in the class would know why he’d done that – “on a board – alone for now – and Confund the piece so it moves in a way which is illegal for it – a pawn might move three spaces instead or two, or you could convince a bishop or knight to move in a straight line,” he explained.

“Work on that for about half the class, or until you succeed, and then you may begin doing research for your papers,” he said. “You may discuss ideas with your classmates, but remember to keep things respectful and on task. If you have any questions, you know the drill – raise your hands. For now, though, come get a board from this pile – they’re all the same – and a piece from the box with your year’s number on it, and begin.”

OOC: Welcome to Intermediate Charms! As usual, all posting rules apply, tag Professor Wright if you need an IC intervention, and remember that while you’re welcome and encouraged to create drama and interesting discussions, Professor Wright will intervene before anything gets too out of hand – if you hex a classmate, he’ll notice, and if you start a screaming match, someone will get sent out to calm down, etc. If you have OOC questions, tag me on the OOC board or catch me in Chatzy. More information about the Statute of Secrecy, the Ilfracombe Incident, and the Confundus Charm can be found on the usual-suspect websites. Have fun!

Subthreads:

Wait that's . . . we would . . . what?! [Tag Hilda or anyone] by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen with Katerina Vorontsov

I'm not by Caitlin Pierce

16 Grayson Wright Don't get confused about it, Intermediates. 113 Grayson Wright 1 5

Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

March 12, 2020 8:30 AM

Wait that's . . . we would . . . what?! [Tag Hilda or anyone] by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

Johana Leonie wished they would talk about the confundus charm in a different context. She was glad that her English was improving to where she was pretty sure she got most of what was being said, but she almost wasn't sure when what was being said was about charming the memories out of Muggles to keep them from knowing about magic. Was that what really happened? The Zauberhexens had always lived in relative peace with the Muggles in their town. They weren't about to go doing blatant magic right in front of them, but superstition ran deep enough that a little charm here and a little potion there usually went unnoticed. Why would someone go around giving people magical brain dusters?

She thought back to her "conversation" with Jeremy Mordue a while back in class and realized that some people might relish the opportunity to do that. Perhaps that was overstating what she knew of him, but what she knew of him wasn't nice and it wasn't a hard leap to make. If one thirteen year old boy thought like that, who was to say there weren't others? Like his parents probably.

Focusing on the task at hand, which was actually a pretty interesting one, Johana Leonie lingered for a moment to see which chess pieces the other third years went to. She was pretty sure the most simple ones would be the ones she and her yearmates would work with, but it was hard to say for sure and she didn't know enough about chesspiece intelligence to decide which one would actually be the hardest to charm just from the way it looked. She had played chess before though, which helped; she at least knew what she was looking for once she'd managed to get herself in position to do it.

She tried to think about what it would be like to stand here with a Muggle and do this same thing. It seemed horrific to even consider. It made her stomach roll. There were probably good reasons - if it was life or death, she knew that choosing life sometimes meant doing difficult things. That was fine. But this seemed like more than that. Their life for hers in a way. That didn't seem fair.

Worried she couldn't express any of this in English, Johana Leonie turned to see whether Hilda was already working with someone and found that someone was already approaching her.

22 Johana Leonie Zauberhexen Wait that's . . . we would . . . what?! [Tag Hilda or anyone] 1432 0 5

Katerina Vorontsov

March 14, 2020 3:53 PM

Tak mnogo slov', as my sister would say. by Katerina Vorontsov

Charms was, alas, not always the easiest class for Katya. She understood the concepts just fine, and her English was good enough to get along with, but her downfall was pronunciation. Sometimes, no matter how hard she tried, some sound just would not come out of her mouth the way it was supposed to, and while she had so far managed to avoid causing any full-fledged disasters, there were still all too many days when she embarrassed herself one way or another.

As Professor Wright’s unusually long lecture went on and on and on, she began to suspect that today was going to include one of those spells which she should try to say without a wand first and only even attempt to cast after she got it right. She did not enjoy creating effects which were wrong and drew attention to her, but anything involving the kind of magic necessary to uphold the Statute of Secrecy was the kind of thing that, done wrong, seemed likely to lead to untold kinds of disaster. Professor Wright’s tone in parts of the speech supported this hypothesis; he sounded like he was prepared to throw them in detention for the rest of their lives if they even thought too hard about doing something contrary to what he was telling them to do.

She took notes on what she understood in Russian and then began looking over the homework packet they had been given, as reading English was usually easier than understanding the spoken language. 700 words of English essay in two weeks, with citations and about a fairly abstract idea (she had to pause to look up the word ethics in her Anglo-Russian dictionary); it would be a challenge, but she thought she could manage it, though she would have to get started as soon as possible, so she would have time to do the readings, figure out what she wanted to say, and writing two or three drafts – Russian first to make sure the ideas themselves were what she wanted them to be, then one in the best English she could muster on her own for practice, then a final version in English with enough cross-referencing of her dictionary, checking implications and secondary meanings and tenses, that she was bound to put another crack in the already quite worn spine before she was done.

For now, though, she needed to make a bissop perform an illegal maneuver on a chessboard. She flipped through her dictionary again, but was not sure enough how to spell the English word to be sure of it, and so just started skimming the Russian column of the English b section, looking for a chess term and not finding one. So instead, she looked furtively around for others in her year until she saw that they had slony, and went to get one of those instead, thanking all heaven for standardization of game pieces. Bissop did not sound at all like slon, so she would never have guessed.

She decided, now that she had her piece in hand, that it might be good to stick with one of the other people who did not have perfect English skills for this assignment, as they would be more likely to understand if she simply could not get the spell word out of her mouth and also less likely to think anything of it if she needed to look up a word while they discussed their homework in the second half of class. Accordingly, she slipped into a seat beside Johana Leonie, figuring she could work in some German practice as well as getting away with using aids where she needed them.

“Hello,” she said. “Does your word for – that - ” She pointed to the piece, not knowing the word for ‘pawn’ in German off the top of her head – “sound like what he said?”

16 Katerina Vorontsov Tak mnogo slov', as my sister would say. 1418 0 5

Katerina Vorontsov

March 14, 2020 3:53 PM

Tak mnogo slov', as my sister would say. by Katerina Vorontsov

16 Katerina Vorontsov Tak mnogo slov', as my sister would say. 1418 0 5

Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

March 24, 2020 3:00 PM

Was meint sie? by Johana Leonie Zauberhexen

Katerina's German was halting, but significantly better than most people around Sonora's. Particularly since most of them spoke no German at all. Those numbers were changing now. There were four native German speakers at Sonora, and four or more learning German or who knew some German already. That was a pretty big percentage of a school this size, but still not enough to make the day-to-day interactions with classmates easy enough to be comfortable for Johana Leonie. She worried more about Friederike Albert, since she was pretty sure he didn't have any close friends who spoke German at all. She thought he would probably like to hang out with Jessica and might have suggested it if she weren't afraid he'd grow up to be a shameless flirt. He already had a date to the Ball anyway.

Ugh. The Ball.

Johana Leonie shook her head, both to clear it and to answer Katrina's question. "Nein. It is . . . like . . . der Bauer. Like when man has no money, oder when he makes the food go growing at his house. Farmer! Farmer. Or man with no money. It does not sound the same. And that is a runner. Ein Läufer. It goes on the chess. Runs."

She was pretty sure that the piece Johana Leonie knew did not look like a bishop or a runner at all. It sort of looked like a frowny salt shaker. But the pieces in this class were different. Johana Leonie wasn't totally sure what a bishop looked like, but thought that the piece Katrina was working with looked more like what she would think a bishop would look like than a runner. She wondered what German wizards' chess pieces looked like. Her own piece for this class hardly looked like a farmer or a peasant. But then, what did those things look like? She had a sneaking suspicion that a lot of people would have thought her family would have made great models for such things. Perhaps she was just bitter over too many things just then to be nice about it, so she should stop thinking about it. It would go the way of the Ball: out of her head until there was anything to do about it anyway.

Some days were better than others and today was a hard one. Her comprehension was doing okay today, but her expressive skills just weren't there. It was probably a combination of being tired and being confused, and just too much. "I feel that my head is already doing the confundus," she said with an apologetic smile. "Wie geht es dir?"

OOC - My understanding of the German names for chess pieces based on reverse Google Translating the names on this list: http://www.eudesign.com/chessops/basics/cpr-lang.htm I don't know for sure whether Johana Leonie's assessment here is correct.

22 Johana Leonie Zauberhexen Was meint sie? 1432 0 5

Caitlin Pierce

April 21, 2020 4:58 PM

I'm not by Caitlin Pierce

Charms was generally one of the better subjects in Caitlin's opinion. Charms was pretty much what one thought about when they thought about magic and it did not typically involve as many distateful things as certain other subjects.

And today, it seemed like something that would be a fairly valuable lesson. The Statute of Secrecy was a very important topic and must be upheld at all costs. How could anyone think otherwise? The same people against it were the same ones whining about all the other differences between how different sorts of people were treated. Surely, without it, wizards and muggles would be treated very different by society at large. EIther magical people would become-as made more sense- the ones of higher status, because of the fact that they had powers and could do things that muggles could not or they would...be persecuted as they had been before. That was, after all, the reason for the Statute of Secrecy in the first place. Now, Caitlin wouldn't mind if wizards were considered the better class of people, because, of course, they were, but muggles trying to destroy them was the more likely outcome. Calling them evil and demonic and executing them.

How could anyone think that magical people and muggles would just live in peace and harmony? How could anyone be so stupid ? They hadn't before and it was likely not to have changed.

Anyway, the point of the topic was that they were being taught how to use the Confundus Charm as well as do an essay on it. Of course, one could avoid incidents where it needed to be cast on muggles who had seen something magical by not...being around muggles. Caitlin had no desire to mix with them and was simply never going to. She never even found much in common with the Muggleborns here at school, and figured their cultures were just too different to ever understand each other. For example, muggles apparently didn't value femininity at all and being ladylike was a value Caitlin personally held dear.

Today's lesson sounded like a fairly simple one. The fifth year got her knight and put it on a board. She took her wand and pointed it at her target " Confundo "She made the motion going around the knight's head. "Move in a straight line." She told it, as Professor Wright suggested.

It looked, just for a moment, like it was listening to her but at the last second, decided to move in an L and smirked at her. Caitlin glared at it and tried again.

11 Caitlin Pierce I'm not 1415 0 5