Grayson Wright
August 07, 2020 7:44 PM
Stop it in its tracks, Beginners. by Grayson Wright
The Charms room, the first and second years were sure to notice upon entry, looked a bit different from usual. Normally, the desks were arranged in rows facing the front blackboard, a fairly standard classroom arrangement. Today, however, the desks themselves seemed to have vanished, replaced by larger rectangular tables with three chairs placed around them. One side of each table was empty, allowing everyone to still see the front of the room – and for the front of the room to see them.Entering the room also involved an extra step which was not part of the normal routine: they were met at the door by their professor, who gave each of them some small object. In most of the cases, these objects were more or less picked at random from one of two boxes of such things: small stuffed animals, representing members of both the mundane and magical beast communities, a few spinning tops and cloth-covered, palm-sized books. In a few cases, however, Professor Wright had chosen specific items for specific students: Theo Spurn’s had been selected to fit his textural preferences, and Quincy Wright received a largish starfish toy, its size and unusual shape making it easy to distinguish from other items even if the colors did not register properly for him. Even among the non-specific objects, though, no two were identical, courtesy of some color-changing charms and other such novelties, and a night when it had amused the professor to spend a very long time focusing on small, mundane activities to keep his mind occupied.
Once everyone was seated, he began his lesson. “As I’m sure you’ve all realized by now,” he said, “a wide knowledge of incantations and a decent understanding of magical theory will greatly increase your effectiveness as a witch or wizard. However, you have your whole life long to study spellbooks. One of the reasons you come to school is to learn enough spells to live a comfortable life, yes, but another reason is to give you the tools you need to continue your journeys into magic for the rest of your lives. One of those tools is technique – being able to cast spells quickly and accurately.”
He was aware that he most likely sounded like Tabitha Brooding-Hawthorne had stolen his body, a bizarre contrast to the colorful toys. Life, however, was absurd that way, sometimes. He continued.
“In our last class, we studied the immobulus charm, and you were told to practice it for homework. Today, you’re going to be practicing it more, with the items in front of you,” he said, with a nod to the nearest random object. “Your task is to immobilize your object – and only your object. If it escapes, pursue it. Each time you succeed, your object will remain frozen for about thirty seconds before it starts trying to escape again, and will be a little more difficult to re-freeze each time. Any questions?”
He gave them an appropriate moment in which to ask questions if they had any, and then raised his own wand. “In that case…let’s begin.”
He gave his wand a flick, and items began to move. Some, assigned to second years, began to fly; others began to scuttle, twirl, crawl, leap, or bounce.
The next forty-five minutes were going to be utter chaos, but nothing had enough sharp edges to put anyone’s eye out, and he could probably cast cushioning charms fast enough if anyone started to fall to prevent an excessive number of chipped teeth and black eyes – injuries minor enough that Katey could handle them easily, and for which he wouldn’t get fired. Learning magic was, after all, a dangerous business; bumps and scratches were to be expected. Possibly also minor duels breaking out, but, well, he could break up any duel held by Beginners anyway, as he indulged for once in the stereotypes of his subject.
OOC: welcome to Beginner Charms! You may make up your object and what it does as you will. For interaction, you might work together to corner objects, start to freeze your object only for someone else’s spell to hit it, or anything else reasonable you might think of. Points awarded for creativity and detail. Have fun!
Subthreads: *Cracks knuckles* Let me at it. by Valentine Duell with Alexander Pierce-Beales
Do I have to kill you? (Tag Mara) by Bertie Jackson with Mara Morales
Hopping Hare (Tag Theo) by Josephine Clyde with Theo Spurn
16
Grayson Wright
Stop it in its tracks, Beginners.
113
1
5
Valentine Duell
August 08, 2020 12:01 PM
*Cracks knuckles* Let me at it. by Valentine Duell
Valentine made it to class early as usual. Her game last term had gone well enough, but running a game for that many people was a lot different than running one for Mama, Papa and a friend or two of theirs. She needed a good idea for her next adventure, and she hadn't really gotten a lot of extra time to think about it lately. Between whatever was going on with Aunt Giselle over break and then readjusting to school again, and then her birthday, things had been just a little bit crazy. But now they needed to settle back down so she could figure out some stuff.So, a little planning time before one of Professor Wright's nice calm, normal charms lessons sounded good. Unfortunately, apparently that was not the plan for today. As she entered the room Professor Wright met her at the door and handed her a small spinning top toy that was a bright purple color. The room had been all changed around as well. This did not bode well for her planning. However, it did mean something interesting might be taking place, and that was always good!
She found a seat at one of the tables and got out her notebook. Maybe she could still get in a little planning before class started. Not really, her mind kept fixating on the top in front of her and what may be happening today to allow her to focus on game plans. In the end, she put the still mostly empty notebook away and listened to Professor Wright as he explained things. She had practiced a little bit... tossing her new dice and then trying to stop them, they were small and hard to aim at though. She had a little more success in tossing Ms. Bunhorn around and stopping her.
When the Professor flicked his wand, her top began to spin and make little circles on the table in front of her. She smiled, this wasn't going to be so hard. "Immobulus!" she commanded and the top stopped in it's place. She grinned at her classmate, "Easy! This isn't so hard..." At that moment her top began to spin again and made a larger circle that carried it off the table and onto the floor! It bounced and careened wildly around her. "Hey!" She called after it, "Get back here!"
She waved her wand again in it's general direction, "Immobulus!"
2
Valentine Duell
*Cracks knuckles* Let me at it.
1490
0
5
Bertie Jackson
August 09, 2020 4:45 AM
Do I have to kill you? (Tag Mara) by Bertie Jackson
Bertie stepped into the charms classroom, finding a small red book was being handed to him as he did so. As everyone else was being handed an object too, this seemed to be most likely some kind of class material. It wasn't like he hadn't read the tales of Beedle the Bard before anyway, so he supposed it didn't matter if he didn't get to do so again now. They were only okay as far as folk stories went anyway. Some people thought folk stories were just for babies but there was actually lots of cool stuff in them. Sometimes it was cool stuff like really bloody vengeance. Sometimes it was cool stuff like comparing non-magical folk story tropes with contemporaneous magical practices of the area as a means of mapping inter-cultural contact in ancient times. That had been his uncle's thesis topic. It turned out that that was very long and complicated and that folk tales absolutely were something you could make mind-bending graphs about. Bertie had not read the whole thing (or really much beyond being very confused by the abstract) but he had talked to his uncle about it. The overall answer, concluded from all those pages of research, was 'it's complicated.' Lately, they had been getting into some of the how and why it was complicated, and some of the things they had tentatively found out. Bertie enjoyed these thesis discussions just as much as he enjoyed hearing the cool folk stories.He liked the Anansi stories better than Beedle. Anansi was a cool trickster god who took the form of a spider and laid traps or bested animals with his wits. It wasn’t totally clear why being a spider was helpful for this, unless maybe other animals didn’t want to talk to a human-shaped-being. It was also possible that it was just one of those random folk story things, and not meant to be based on actual magic. The non-magical Ashanti people told Anansi stories too, so it was possible they weren’t magical folk tales. They were still fun and better than the very vanilla whinings of Beedle the Bard. Of course, whatever the shortcomings of Beedle the Bard's tales, they were quite possibly preferable to whatever today held in store. He regarded the furniture arrangement with some suspicion, as it practically screamed 'group work.'
Happily, though, as Professor Wright explained their task, the furniture configuration did not come up. It had either just been put that way for ease of using the space, for another lesson, or because he had meant to have some of them work in groups but had forgotten to say so. Bertie was not going to be the one to remind him. He was quite happy with the thought of spending the lesson wandering around the room stalking a book instead of talking to anyone.
When the charm activated, Bertie's book took off. It seemed to have been charmed to mimic a butterfly, and it opened itself to the middle, flapping each set of cover and pages as it flitted about the room. It took a couple of goes before he managed to account for its speed and actually hit it, but the casualties on those occasions were the window and the wall, which were already staying still. On the third try though, he caught it, and it dropped motionless to the floor.
He waited it out, following again when it took off, thinking it was not really sporting to hover over it and shoot at point blank range. When it wasn't fired upon, it tended to alternate between flying and settling, very much still like a butterfly in the way it pulsed its pages opened and closed whilst resting. He got it twice more whilst it was doing that.
He was following it again when rather than alighting on a piece of furniture, as it had done previously, it fluttered down onto Mara’s shoulder.
“Keep - - st-st-still,” he told her, feeling his cheeks flush slightly as he heard himself stammer. He had mostly been managing the spell, at least quietly. The soft vowel sound to start, and the fact that there was enough going on that everyone seemed preoccupied had made it easier. Now, of course, it was different. Obviously Mara was aware of him. He signed the spell, pretty sure he had one shot before his target moved again and he lost his opportunity. If he stammered, he’d probably mess up. The fact that that might be dangerous to the person his book was on was a slightly lesser concern than the fact he would embarrass himself, but he didn’t particularly want to do either.
The book fell to the floor, still twitching slightly. His eyes followed it, though he watched for Mara’s reaction in his peripheral vision - he also nodded in slightly awkward acknowledgement of the fact she had done as requested. His spells usually weren’t weaker when he signed, so he supposed that was the promise that it would get harder as they went along. He sort of wanted to say that he had got it three times already and that it counted just as much when he signed so that Mara wouldn’t think he was just bad at spellwork or that he had some kind of impairment. But given how much he was guaranteed to stutter whilst trying to get that sentence out, he wasn’t sure whether it would help or hinder his case. He also wasn’t supposed to talk about covert things with a civilian. He wondered whether she was cool enough to be brought into the fold as an ally, or whether she now knew too much and he was going to have to kill her.
13
Bertie Jackson
Do I have to kill you? (Tag Mara)
1497
0
5
Alexander Pierce-Beales
August 09, 2020 8:25 AM
Yeah, let her at it! by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander's start of term had been pretty normal, which was weird in itself. Was anything normal in this world? He supposed it was becoming more and more that way. Today, Professor Wright handed him a brightly colored rainbow plush frog, which was sort of funny because the professor looked a bit like a plush frog himself. When the activity for the day was explained, Alexander found himself gearing up excitedly. This was just like laser tag, except not at all. But it did make him wonder what wizard laser tag would be like.He peered at his little frog for a moment while it was on his desk, wondering whether Barnabas would be jealous. The horse and his owner had been at odds recently, as Alexander hadn't been taking him everywhere with him any more. Still, they hung out when Alexander was in his own dorm room so Barnabas had very little room to complain. When the professor waved his wand, the frog gave a very real-to-life leap from the table and then . . . it began to leap all directions? He supposed that was a feature of himself being a second year, where things might not be so easy as a straight leaping frog, but it was odd to say the least to watch a frog leap sideways and backwards, especially a rainbow plush frog.
Alexander retrieved his wand and followed his frog, hoping to Merlin - because apparently that was what wizards hoped to - that he wasn't about to be hit by one of the charms flying around him. "Immobulus!" he said, shouting after his frog as it leapt into the air over another toy. The spell worked! As the frog fell through the air to land on the floor, it took out a spinning top that had been underneath it. Alexander raised his eyes to apologise for interrupting another student's practice when he saw Valentine Duell, her wand up, the spell having already left her mouth. Had her own toy still been there, it would have been a perfect hit. As it was . . .
He felt his body slow to a stop with a jolt and it felt a bit like he'd been electrocuted, not because of any shock behind the spell but because very suddenly his body was stiff and he had not decided to make it be that way. It wore off quickly and he blinked, feeling twitchy.
"Good shot," he told her, grimacing before he managed to replace it with his usual neutral expression. "I mean it though. That was good!"
22
Alexander Pierce-Beales
Yeah, let her at it!
1475
0
5
Valentine Duell
August 09, 2020 10:53 AM
Sorry! Sorry! Umm.. duck? by Valentine Duell
Valentine watched in horror as her spell struck Alexander. He hadn't been there, and then there had been a frog toy and it hit her top and then he was there and... she raced to his side apologizing, "I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! Are you alright?" By the time she reached him, the effects of the spell seemed to be wearing off. She was immensely relieved, and at the same time mildly irritated.Somewhere in the back of her mind she knew that if Alexander had been a terrible monster trying to kill her, that spell would not have held him long enough to give her a chance to do anything else about it. He wasn't, which was very good. But still that dark corner of her mind nagged at her. She didn't like it.
Alexander looked like he was recovering, and being a little snarky in the process? Well, he had the right she supposed. She was about to apologize again when he reiterated his statement. Had he really meant it? "Thanks..." she responded a little cautiously, "But I don't know about that... I certainly didn't hit what I was aiming at." She gave him another very apologetic look. "You are okay, right?"
An odd noise caught her attention from where the toys had landed in a pile. Her top was flipping through the air! It landed again and took off spinning in crazy, looping, off-balance circles. Alexander's frog had gotten impaled on the top's handle and kicked at the ground sending the two toys hurling and spinning erratically through the air once more before crashing to the ground and repeating the chaotic movements again.
"Oh dear," Valentine almost whispered as she watched the conglomeration careen wild around the room. "We may have created a monster."
2
Valentine Duell
Sorry! Sorry! Umm.. duck?
1490
0
5
Alexander Pierce-Beales
August 09, 2020 1:12 PM
Goose! No wait, that's not what I meant. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
"I'm alright," Alexander promised. He was honestly sort of glad she'd gotten him because the last time he tried to talk to her, he could only think pretty girl and there weren't any words that he could manage very well.She seemed hesitant to accept his compliment and Alexander shook his head, dismissing her self-deprecation. "No, no, you totally would have if I hadn't smushed it," he said. He even managed a little smile. He did hope that that would become a more natural expression some day, but at least it was a possible one now. "And it was pretty strong, especially since you weren't actually trying to hit a human and it still worked on one." He did smile a bit then. Complimenting people on solid, tangible things that had evidence was easy because it wasn't risky. Usually, the compliments that came to Alexander's mind were looks-based because that's what he saw first because that's how he drew people. Except, that wasn't quite true. It wasn't that he just saw faces and shapes, it was that he saw all the little things that made up someone's expression, and all the lines that people have on their body. It sounded much creepier than it was, so he just mostly kept his nice words to himself. He was a terrible Teppenpaw.
Alexander turned his attention with Val to the . . . oh gosh. The Frankenstein's nightmare that was their toys. It was sort of hilarious actually. It was the sort of thing that he would have imagined whilst playing with those toys as a kid, but never actually gotten to see for real. What do you get when you mix a frog and a top? Except the punchline was the monster, as Val called it, spinning and leaping in front of them. "Do you want to get it?" he asked. "Or shall I?"
22
Alexander Pierce-Beales
Goose! No wait, that's not what I meant.
1475
0
5
Valentine Duell
August 09, 2020 5:43 PM
*Eyes suspciously* What did you mean then? by Valentine Duell
Alexander always looked... not exactly sad, but he never really looked happy either. It made Valentine feel a little sad as well. She often wondered if there was anything she could do to help him smile. Everyone was happier when they were... happy. Well, she was glad that statement had stayed in her head. Alexander was claiming that he was fine, which was good, but she still looked him over with a critical eye. It looked like all of his parts were moving again, that was a good sign.He smiled a little bit! He was trying to assure her that he had messed up her shot and that was sweet of him, but... she didn't think she should have cast it in the first place if she had notice he was nearby. She had just gotten to focused on her top. Maybe that was another part of the lesson that the Professor wanted to make sure they learned. She smiled as he smiled, mainly because he had actually smiled! That was better. "Thanks, but I should have been more careful. Do you think that's some of the point of the lesson today?"
She also wanted to tell him to smile more often, he looks better when he was smiling. But, that might be considered rude, so she held her tongue and considered the monstrosity that now faced them. "I'm not sure," she considered as the thing continued its random antics about the room. "We were instructed to immobilized our own objects and only our own objects. I don't think I'm good enough at aiming to just hit the top. If you can stop the frog though, that may give me the opportunity to hit the top. Then we'll have a few moments to try and separate them again." She held up her wand and gave him an encouraging smile, "What do you think?"
2
Valentine Duell
*Eyes suspciously* What did you mean then?
1490
0
5
Mara Morales
August 10, 2020 6:43 PM
I'm gonna go with 'no.' by Mara Morales
Mara was not (for the few seconds she had to really dwell on the issue, before the glittering yellow stuffed dragon toy she had been handed when she entered the room suddenly began trying to scurry away from her) too sure what she thought of the lesson (to the extent it could be called a lesson) for the day.On one hand, Mara was confident that she could do this. She had practiced as told last night, both because she’d quite seen the point of that exercise and because practicing spells was a good way to keep her mind off…other things. Between her desire for distraction and the lessons of Professor Brooding-Hawthorne (Defense Department), she thought she could pick up speed on this spell pretty easily. There was just enough of a challenge in this to keep it interesting, but it was close enough to where she was already that she had no real doubts she could complete the task with a little work. That made it most likely a satisfying enough way to pass forty minutes.
On the other hand, though, Mara had been doing her best to lay low in public for a few weeks now. She had studiously avoided drawing attention to herself, unnatural though that could feel to her. She had spoken up less often in class, been less assertive than usual in group work. Sometimes, she didn’t even do this on purpose – just out of what was beginning to feel like a natural wariness toward the people around her, her teachers and classmates. Ridiculous though it obviously was, she felt as though she bore some dark mark on her forehead, invisible to her but possibly visible to others if they looked at her for too long.
The toy, however, was not going to wait for her to muse her way into a conclusion. It had a simple goal: to get away. Keeping her head down in public was against her nature, but she could do it; actively failing, though, was a long step too far beyond her limits. The dragon scurried away, and she raised her wand. “Immobulus!”
The spell hit the target, but for some reason only seemed to paralyze the back legs: the front lurched, then turned its head toward its back legs, snapping (bopping?) its plush jaws as though to try to eat whatever was restraining it. Mara, for her part, glared first at her wand and then at it, almost offended by this only partial success.
Her dragon, apparently determining there was no physical impairment to attack (a thought she had never expected to have in her life about a toy; how could a stuffy toy examine situations through its little glass eyes, come to a conclusion, and act on it?), tried next to rear up, raising its two front legs and torso and began to spread its wings. Mara raised her wand again, but just knew, somehow, that she was already too late before she even opened her mouth. She got out “immo – “ before the toy began to flap its wings and took to the air.
For a second, Mara stared at it, a bit taken aback – both because it was still, even after all this time, a little bizarre to see a toy literally take flight, and because she would have assumed that not being able to use its tail or back legs would have impaired its ability to flap its wings and get moving. Indeed, it did seem to be dragging a little in the back – but that wouldn’t last. That thought brought her back to practical matters, and she adjusted her aim and repeated the spell just in time, sending the toy falling back down to the table.
“Sorry if that, uh, is a thing you feel in some way,” she muttered to it, again wondering if Jessica had been right and she really had been in a mental ward for the past year and a half.
The toy either didn’t hear or didn’t understand or didn’t care to acknowledge her apologies, though, and was soon mobile again – moreso than before. It took directly to the air this time and she tracked it through the air with her wand, trying to make the wand movement and speak at the same time as she took aim.
This did not work; her wand certainly sent out a flash of light, but it went pointlessly off to the left, apparently confused by her movements – she was pretty sure she had gotten the word right, after all. She swore under her breath a bit in Spanish, annoyed and not sure why, if the spell to make a broom come to her hand was simply ‘up’ in either English or Spanish, she couldn’t just point and click to make things happen here. It would be more effective to just shoot ‘em than to do all this waving about, though admittedly this way did have less of a chance of killing one of her classmates…
Another toy flew in her dragon’s path, causing it to pause, and she hit it again. This time, she caught it as it fell – and was rewarded for her pains by having it fly at her face a moment later, startling her, before it flew over her head, forcing her to whip around to look for it again.
The professor, it seemed, hadn’t lied about the task becoming progressively more difficult. Aside from the dragon, at least, being smart enough to use diversionary and evasive tactics, and to adapt to obstacles, there was also just the problem of other toys being in the air, blocking her view and her aim. She remembered, quite clearly, that bit about only hitting her own target. She suspected they were being evaluated in some fashion, covertly, by Professor Wright.
She was considering her options (how much trouble was she likely to get into if she climbed up and stood on one of these tables to get a better angle?) when something landed on her shoulder – something heavy and hard. Mara froze for a moment, and by the time the instant kick of the flight-or-fight response was over, someone was pointing a wand at her and telling her to be still.
No, not someone. Bertie Jackson.
The flash of panic only lasted a second, though, before logic kicked back in. Bertie was an Aladren, like her. He had to have better sense than to try to do anything untoward to her right in front of their Head of House, in the middle of the classroom – and if he didn’t, then score one for team Hayles-Morales against team Jackson, because nothing they had learned could seriously hurt anyone and she’d milk the minor inconvenience for all it was worth. Another second, and the thing on her shoulder was tumbling to the floor – a flying book, it seemed. It was hit, but not completely immobilized, and that was absolutely the least interesting thing about it.
“How did you do that?” she asked, momentarily forgetting any and all conflict between their families in the face of something interesting. Sometimes the professors did things without saying anything, but she had never observed anyone in the Beginners classes doing so, and knew that Jessica couldn’t either. This ability made Bertie far more interesting than anything a drama channel might have wanted to report on about either of them or any of their associates.
16
Mara Morales
I'm gonna go with 'no.'
1472
0
5
Bertie Jackson
August 10, 2020 9:54 PM
Let's gather more data by Bertie Jackson
Bertie felt Mara's eyes boring into him and he braced himself for the worst possible outcomes. 'What's wrong with you?' or 'Nice one, B-B-B-Bertie.' He absolutely hated when people did that. Well, people or anything really. He was currently finding COMC irritatingly hard for a doss subject and resented Professor Marsh setting them an assigment that relied so heavily on speaking. He was doing really well with getting Aries to say her own name because he'd been able to pick something he knew he wouldn't struggle with but he didn't like talking to his Jackelop much outside of that, dreading it repeating his stammer back to him.How did you do that?
That wasn't mockery. That was curiosity. A triumphant grin spread for a moment across Bertie's face.
"Fffreezing charm," he answered, his buoyant mood meaning that he didn't even drag the 'f' out too badly. His smile settled into a slightly smug 'I know something you don't know.' When you were the youngest of three immediate siblings, and functionally more like the youngest of eight, everyone always thought they knew better than you all the time. It was very annoying, and Bertie revelled in the chance to turn it back on someone else.
But still, Mara had noticed him, and she clearly knew something was Up (besides his book, which was stirring itself to take flight again) but she was asking in a good way. He really liked thinking of his signing like a cool superpower, and not like the thing he had to do to make up for something being wrong with him. He recognised her tone. It was the Aladren tone. The tone of someone who had been set a puzzle and who wanted to figure it out. He very much liked the idea of being a puzzle, rather than just that kid who couldn't talk right. Of course, if Mara figured him out, maybe she might think that - she might be disappointed by what she discovered. But right now, he was a mystery, and that was cool.
He went to follow his book, inclining his head in a gesture that clearly invited her to come with and figure it out for herself. The book was flying higher this time. That made it harder to get. He wondered whether he was allowed to use other spells to try to frighten(?) it, and thus redirect his path. Logically, he thought that was entirely fair. In real life, you would use whatever spells you needed to get the job done. However, he wasn't sure Professor Wright would agree, and he didn't want to have to defend himself in front of the entire class if the teacher came to tell him off.
He tried the freezing charm again, sticking to signing both because it was only fair to give Mara clues, if she was looking, and because he was a little bit conscious that she might be. His cheeks glowed slightly red as he missed, even though it was clearly an almost impossible shot. His bookerfly did however veer wildly away from the spell, bumping into a fluffy yellow dragon as it did so. The dragon did not seem best pleased by this and chomped at the book, grabbing it by its cover. Well, that both slowed down and distrated his target. Excellent.
He signed the spell again, and the book went more or less limp.
13
Bertie Jackson
Let's gather more data
1497
0
5
Mara Morales
August 12, 2020 3:32 PM
Which way are you leaning at this point? by Mara Morales
Mara’s immediate impulse, upon hearing Bertie’s response of ‘freezing charm,’ was to make a comment about the relative intelligence of a donkey hypothetically in his possession, but she had kind of walked into that one. Her mouth tipped into something close to a smirk, acknowledging the point as she sought to reformulate the question, before his book escaped again and reminded her that there was, in fact, an assignment from the professor that they were supposed to be doing….As she looked for her dragon, she also noticed Bertie’s head-tilt. That seemed to be a non-verbal (and as far as she could tell, after half a year of classes with the guy, non-verbal seemed to be Bertie’s default mode of being) invitation. Interesting. Was he just reminding her there was a lesson to do, and that it was largely unrelated to whatever it was he’d done? Considering the way he’d been grinning immediately beforehand, though, and the context – she had asked what he had done, and his response had been making a smart remark before going to, presumably, do it again – the idea that the head tilt was an invitation did look more likely than not.
Accepting it, though, was another question. Acceptance came with some potential problems. For one thing, he was not her enemy, but he was definitely in the enemy camp. For another, somehow, this seemed like the opposite of lying low and keeping her head down and trying to be invisible. If Professor Wright noticed, had heard rumors, thought she was picking on first years….
Still, she had never known Professor Wright to be like that. In fact, as far as she could tell, her – their – Head of House seemed on the whole more inclined to fairness than not, and therefore not the type to act on an assumption without checking to verify it. Since Mara was not doing anything wrong, there was nothing for him to observe, so she was in the clear. And she needed to find her dragon again anyway, and that direction was as good as any to start looking in.
Her eyes went back to Bertie, though, when she saw him move as though to cast a spell again, and this time she noticed he was doing something with his free hand, too. A moment later, another toy – there was her dragon! – bit his book, and he did the thing again, this time successfully.
“Immobulus!” she snapped quickly, hitting her dragon again. “That was handy, our things running into each other. Is that – what you’re doing your other hand? Is that how you’re doing the spell and not saying the thing?” she asked.
16
Mara Morales
Which way are you leaning at this point?
1472
0
5
Bertie Jackson
August 12, 2020 9:32 PM
Allies? by Bertie Jackson
It was Bertie's turn to he surprised as the fluffy yellow dragon dropped along with his book, courtesy of Mara. He had noticed her in his peripheral vision, had known she had taken the bait and was following him, but it was rather surprising to find their toys had run into each other. Sherlock and Mycroft said of coincidence that the universe was rarely so lazy (or at least, his cousins had quoted that from the TV show, he hadn't actually been allowed to watch it, and so far it hadn't come up in any of the stories he had read). It seemed an odd thing for someone so scientific to say. Bertie had an entire poster on his bedroom wall of strangely correlated but utterly unrelated data, his favourite of which was the correlation between the number of letters in the word spelt by a spelling bee winner and the number of deaths by venomous spider bite. The universe was incredibly random sometimes. Of course, what Sherlock and Mycroft meant was that everything was suspicious because they were investigating murders amongst people rich amd powerful enough to pull strings. He supposed he should keep an eye out for high levels of political or corporate espionage dictating his and Mara's interactions but in this case, they would have had to interfere with the materials for Charms class, and it seemed unlikely they'd got to Professor Wright. Still, he would keep an eye on things, just in case.He nodded his assent that it had been handy. Whether it was a coincidence or mass conspiracy it was certainly useful. That, he supposed, might even have been the reason that she had followed - not so much an interest in what he was doing but wanting to get the class assignment done. Luckily, that was also a perfectly worthy reason. She had also picked up on what was going on with his spell casting. It wasn't like he had made that purposefully difficult - if anything quite the opposite. He had wanted to see if she would play along and she had. He made a note to set her a harder puzzle sometime as a reward. He gave her a sign that everyone knew - a grin and a thumbs up.
"It's a sssecret though," he whispered, "A-a bit of one anyway. Only smart p-people like you and -- Quincy get to know," he explained. He was happy for people to work him out. Just going around and telling other people the answer was cheating though. "Fffor now, anyway," he added. He was sure it would become public knowledge at some stage but hopefully he would have a few friends on his side by then.
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Bertie Jackson
Allies?
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Mara Morales
August 13, 2020 2:03 PM
I'm seeing how that could be mutually advantageous. by Mara Morales
A secret, huh? “My lips are sealed,” said Mara, with a half-smile, amused by his conspiratorial air, and a bit by the irony of it.If he knew that she had secrets of her own, though, he wasn’t letting on, and overall he seemed kind of…cool. Or interesting, anyway. Someone Mara could imagine having a good time hanging out with. She could only assume that either his sister ignored his existence for the most part or that he just had the mental fortitude not to let her bother him as much as she seemed to be able to bother Crotali. That last one was more likely, she thought; Crotalus – strangely, given how very solid Professor Skies seemed, when she was their Head of House – seemed to be where the people who were a bit…fragile went. She could only assume the idea was that if you put all the delicate people together, they’d be able to avoid other people more effectively and thus avoid quite as many of them cracking up as would occur in the normal course of nature….
She didn’t want to think about that, though. None of that was her fault. Her existence had kind of made it all worse, one way or another, but she hadn’t asked to be born or to have whatever genetic mutation it was which allowed her perfectly ordinary dad to somehow produce two kids who had to come here for school. Those things were not her fault, and it wasn’t her fault that some people were just screwed up in ways that made them brittle on their good days and weak on their bad days – not with De Matteo, and not with Jessica, and not with anyone else in Crotalus who was a basket case just waiting to drop. She was what she was, and they were what they were. Dwelling on it was pointless and she wasn’t going to do it.
“Quincy, huh. I’ve talked to him before. He’s a cool dude,” she said. “So’s – your thing. I’ve always thought it was weird, that there was just supposed to be one way to do this stuff – there were plenty of places Rome never conquered. Seems weird that you’d have to have been invaded by ancient Italians to have wizards, or do the stuff right.” She wanted to ask a lot of questions – was he ambidextrous naturally, or had he had to overcome the whole patting-head-while-rubbing-belly problem? How was wizard-magic-signing compared to ASL or stuff, was it international like Latin, or would wizards in different countries do it differently? Could he show her actually how to do it? – but she suspected these would be somewhat unwelcome, and anyway – they were still in the middle of class. “There they go again,” she observed of their items. “Here’s hoping that they don’t get so smart by the end of class that they go attack the atmospheric charms or something to take control of the school.”
She was joking. She thought. Or at least hoped.
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Mara Morales
I'm seeing how that could be mutually advantageous.
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Bertie Jackson
August 14, 2020 6:03 AM
And fun? by Bertie Jackson
"Yeah, he's ffun to share with," Bertie nodded when Mara commented on Quincy. He didn't mention the microscope, even though that was a big plus of living with him, because it was up to Quincy who had earnt the privilege to know about that, and to get turns with it. He didn’t want Mara bugging Quincy about it, because Bertie would be really annoyed if someone set someone else on him like that, even if Mara did seem pretty interesting.His eyes lit up as Mara not only called his signing 'cool' but revealed that the sorting potion hadn't made a mistake when it put her in Aladren. He didn’t think the potion could exactly make mistakes, but there were some Aladrens who were more obviously suited to the house than others, and some who must have been borderline cases at best.
“N-no, just uh-colonised at some point by white people,” he commented on how places needed touching by the Roman empire. It was pretty clear, even without the USA ever having been part of that, how white western magic had got here. And pretty clear how and why Native magic and African magics had never reached the same kind of standing, even though they existed. “There’s lots of types of mmmagic that get left off school -- curricula,” he leaned in and whispered.
His head turned as their class projects took off again. His bookerfly seemed to have learnt from experience in that it was now flapping hastily away from Mara’s dragon. He grinned at her comment.
“I don’t thiiiink those are brought down by b-b-biting,” he almost laughed except the end of the sentence turned into a little blink, a little nose scrunch of self-consciousness. He had been sure about a million times over in this conversation that his stammer must have stood out. He thought it was so obvious. But everyone else said that some of the smaller hesitations, some of the stumbles weren’t even noticeable unless you knew what you were looking for. That though, had been pretty blatant. He was frustrated, because he could control it better than that - he just hadn’t thought he needed to because he and Mara had been talking about good subjects, ones that were interesting, and when he was happy in a conversation it was easier.
“Ummmanyway,” he mumbled, nodding in the direction his book had gone in.
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Bertie Jackson
And fun?
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Mara Morales
August 14, 2020 12:49 PM
It seems like an option to me. You think? by Mara Morales
“I’d wondered,” said Mara, not sounding terribly surprised, when Bertie explained that there was a lot of magic which didn’t make it to the school curriculum. “My mom’s from Colombia, but she’s not like…this, so she couldn’t really tell me if they had wizards there before the Spanish showed up.”Not that Mamá would probably ever have told her if she knew. Her grandmother, though, might have, if she had known one way or the other. Mara didn’t really know her the woman, but the times they had met, she had seemed cool enough that Mara was not quite sure how someone like her – someone who wore such bright colors, and whose Spanish was not nearly as formal and Castilian as Mamá’s – even ended up in, well, their family, much less as Mara’s mother’s mother. Of course, Abuela was from the coast, and apparently that did make a difference, in Colombia.
“Do you think they have anything in the library about stuff like this?” she asked. “Might be cool to look sometime. See if we can know stuff everybody else doesn’t.” It didn’t seem logical, at first glance anyway, that the library in a school dedicated to a particular kind of magic, but…the point Professor Wright had made at the beginning of the lesson was that it was up to them to learn a lot of stuff on their own. Magic school wasn’t about teaching them all the magic there was, or even necessarily all the magic they might practically need – just how to fend for themselves. Which they frankly did a lot of the time here anyway. How many lessons, after all, were just the teacher spending five minutes telling them what a spell was supposed to do and which words to say and how to move the wand before telling them to just practice on their own? How much effort each of them put into it seemed to largely be up to them; in any case, the professors didn’t seem too anxious about getting fired if the students weren’t perfect spellcasters. It would fit perfectly with what she had gathered was the wizard philosophy of education, she thought, if they just kind of left the information out there, but never bothered mentioning it to anyone who wasn’t keen enough to go looking for it on his or her own.
She grinned, too, at the idea that the spells probably couldn’t be taken out by biting. “Yeah, but what if it figures out how to steal a wand and use it in its mouth?” she joked, ignoring his stammer again out of politeness since it didn’t affect her ability to understand him in context. He, however, seemed suddenly more subdued.
Mara nodded. “I’ll try getting the dragon again, maybe move it while it’s down – see if it’ll chase the book again, maybe we can keep them busy with each other and make it a little easier on ourselves,” she suggested. If the toys were getting smarter, than she figured the students needed to do the same to keep winning.
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Mara Morales
It seems like an option to me. You think?
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
August 14, 2020 3:21 PM
Like we were going to chase each other around a circle and try to sit down before getting caught. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander considered her question. He wasn't really sure if it was meant to be considered but it was an interesting question so he wanted to anyway. Val was really smart, apparently. And her smile made him want to smile more so he did exactly that when he answered. "It might be," he decided, agreeing that that made sense.Turning to the mess of toys, Alexander felt a surge of nerves when he remembered that he was the second year which meant that he was theoretically meant to be better at this than she was and he was probably going to have to go first. This proved true when Val suggested that her aim might not be up to snuff for the job anyway. "I bet you could do it," he said kindly. She had an idea though, and then she had another smile and Alexander really liked when she smiled so he probably would have gone over and offered to be her target for some aiming practice if that had been her idea. But it wasn't, so that was good. He nodded, adjusting his grip on his wand. He was sure this was going to be the moment he woke up from that coma he wasn't so sure about anymore and found out he had no magic after all, but he wouldn't find out unless he actually tried. He did have the height advantage, he supposed, which may be helpful since the frog was on top of the top anyway. "I think I'd be lucky if I could give as good as you," he told her, really hoping to ride the train of kindness into friendship territory. "Let's do it."
Stepping around the side of the two toys - he was sort of hoping to flank them, which was weird since it wasn't as if there was a lot of sentient battle-strategy going on right now - Alexander raised his wand and stood up on his tiptoes, both from nerves and for the sake of his sightline. He counted the toys move two more times, hoping to get a feel for the rhythm of their movement, before raising his wand, aiming at the frog, and casting the charm again. He could almost not bear to see whether it worked.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
Like we were going to chase each other around a circle and try to sit down before getting caught.
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Valentine Duell
August 14, 2020 7:29 PM
Chasing and catching poor, innocent girls? by Valentine Duell
"Yes." She agreed with Alexander's analysis. More smiles! Much better. "The charm itself we could practice easily enough on a slowly moving object, right?" Then something else occurred to her, "Or, does the speed of the object affect the difficulty of stopping it with the spell? I mean... besides the difficulty in hitting it." She added quickly. "Does it take more magic power to stop something that is moving quickly?"She couldn't help but smile as Alexander said he thought she could do it, then blushed a bit as he continued to compliment her. She wasn't convinced though. Her magic wasn't that good... it was passable, but his was better. He had a whole extra year of learning and training backing him up. Then it was time to move. She responded to his 'Let's do it' with the best serious soldier curt nod and a simple "Yeah." Move out, off to war. Stuff like that.
He started circling around the toys, and the tactic became clear. They were going to surround the toys! That was an excellent plan, then they'd have a better chance to catch them whichever direction they bounded off to next. She got a solid grip on her wand and started circling the toys in the opposite direction. Valentine watched the toys and Alexander. He was pacing them, trying to find a pattern, ready to act as soon as the moment was right.
This was it! He raised his wand and she suddenly saw the minor flaw in her part of the plan. She was in the direct line of fire! Alexander let the spell cut loose and it flew through the air as she let out a small squeak and ducked, involuntarily covering her head with her arms.
Nothing happened. She could move fine. Valentine peeped out and saw the motionless frog still stuck upon the spinning top. He'd done it! "You did it!" She called out to Alexander smiling wide. "I knew you could!" She ran across the room to give him a congratulatory high-five. "That was a great shot!"
She turned to face her adversary now, and her face fell. The frog had twitched. Then it kicked and was off again. The color drained from Val's face as she turned back to Alexander. "Do... do you think you could do it... again?" She asked with an apologetically sheepish look on her face.
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Valentine Duell
Chasing and catching poor, innocent girls?
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Bertie Jackson
August 14, 2020 8:11 PM
Definitely! by Bertie Jackson
“She’s non-non-magic-- she isn’t magical?” Bertie confirmed, figuring that it would be obvious that that wasn’t a double negative but wanting to make sure, “Mine too. But mmmy dad is. He-he’s an anthropologist, but he studies interactions with non-magical people more. B-but he knows people who know about this stuff,” he explained.Mara hadn’t said anything about his stammer. She hadn’t even reacted. He was pretty sure she had to have noticed by now because she clearly had decent enough observation powers, plus she had the clue that he signed and that there had to be a reason for that. This meant that was just… not being a jerk about things. That was good. He now had two people who seemed more interested in what he said than how he said it.
“Maybe. We should definitely go on a research mission!” he agreed, grinning broadly at the fact that she wanted to spend time together in the library finding out things other people didn’t know. That was just the description of an absolutely perfect afternoon.
“I-I haven’t ever heard of mmmouth-based draconic wand magic being po-possible. But I guess that’s what-what we were just saying. Who kn-kn-knows?” he tried. Joking was definitely less familiar territory than agreeing to research projects in the library, but she seemed willing to laugh with him rather than at him.
“Ooh, that’s an interesting idea!” he grinned, when she mentioned trying to trick their toys into different behaviours. “I was thhhinking about using o-other spells. Like, sparks to-to try to scare it into flying in a-a different direction or something. But I wasn’t ssssure if that was allowed. Meet mmme back h-here when you’ve g-got the goods?” he asked.
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Bertie Jackson
Definitely!
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
August 15, 2020 8:41 PM
Yes. NO. No is the right answer. I don't chase. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
Alexander nodded, wondering the same thing as Valentine explained her question. "That makes sense," he agreed. "Because speed and strength are sort of related, right? A slow-moving human is still harder than a fast-moving toy, but a fast-moving toy might be harder than a slow-moving one?" After a moment, he shrugged. "I'm not sure," he admitted.His spell landed and Alexander nodded to himself, pleased with the result of his efforts. It turned into a more self-conscious pleasure when Val ran up to him grinning. He accepted the high five with another blush and a sheepish, shy smile. It was weirdly easy to smile at Val. She looked so nice when she smiled. And she was so nice. She was a much better Teppenpaw than he was; he didn't like most people that much and she seemed to like everyone at least a little.
"Thanks," he murmured, resisting the urge to pull on his collar and ask about the temperature suddenly rising in the room. Also resisting the urge to look around for Mab to make sure he wasn't losing his mind and that Val really seemed interested in talking to him.
The feeling left when Val looked appalled all of a sudden. "No no, that's fine," he promised. "I can do it again," he agreed. He wasn't at all sure he could though. He was nervous now. An idea came to him then and he smiled a little anxiously at her. "Or you can," he suggested, feeling fidgety. "Good practice. Especially now," he added as the frog-top combo flopped over onto the frog's back and twitched horribly. "We might be doing it a mercy at this point," he grimaced.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
Yes. NO. No is the right answer. I don't chase.
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Valentine Duell
August 16, 2020 9:13 AM
Then what do you do? by Valentine Duell
Alexander was starting to get good at smiling. Valentine considered this a good thing. She was going to have to keep encouraging him, it seemed to be working. Plus, then he might keep helping her in class. This class she seemed to be doing alright, but she was relying on him and Bonabelle and Lavender for quite a few of the other ones. He was a good Teppenpaw to help her out like this, although he was starting to look a little uncomfortable. She was messing him up, and making this difficult for him.He claimed that it was fine, and he could fix her mistake in allowing his frog to reanimate itself. Then he gave her another smile and suggested that she try. She glanced back at the toys. Alexander might be right. She nodded. "Okay.." she said slowly, considering the situation. The frog was laying there, and the top was doing its best to spin away, drilling away at the frog. She shuddered a little a the imagery. Glancing back over her shoulder at Alexander, she gave him a determined look. "Right. Let's end this."
Adjusting her grip, she aimed her wand at her top, conveniently being held in place place, with just a little wobble by Alexander's frog. The frog was kicking, but the top was keeping it pinned on its back where the motion did little good. If felt like this was the moment to make some sort of dramatic speech as she brought an ending blow to her adversary, but for the life of her, she couldn't think of a good one. So, in the end she sighed, aimed her wand and uttered the incantation.
It would have been hard to miss, and the spell did it's job. The top stopped spinning. She uttered a quick cheer and turned on Alexander grinning. "Go now! Hurry Alexander, get that frog yet!"
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Valentine Duell
Then what do you do?
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
August 18, 2020 11:57 AM
Mostly just watch. by Alexander Pierce-Beales
A yellow suit like a bumblebee and a long braid, with translucent wings and a black mask so the brightest thing in her face was her eyes. Her superpower would be something to do with pollen and flowers. A bright comic spread bloomed in Alexander's mind as Valentine looked over her shoulder at him and he indulged himself in a moment of debate over whether it was creepy to draw it later on. Let's end this was a great catchphrase. Her archnemesis could be a giant frog and his army of spinning tops.His thoughts were interrupted by Valentine's successful spell, and he followed her command to greet his frog from the monstrosity. It wriggled and tried to break away but he managed to detach it from the top and squeeze it hard enough to keep it from leaping out of his hands again. Unfortunately, the stuffing and beans were falling out a bit now. It reminded him of Barnabas when he'd accidentally ripped his little friend apart. Nathaniel had been able to fix him then and he thought that maybe he could do it now. Or he could ask Professor Wright.
Glancing at Val, he decided he could do it.
Concentrating, he waved his wand at the hole through the middle of his frog. "Reparo," he said, trying to visualize his whole frog once again. To his surprise, it mostly worked! The hole was pulled shut. It definitely didn't work well, as the fabric now pinched funny in the middle, but it worked. He smiled a little, proud of himself, before the frog jumped away again and Alexander grunted, irritated. "You'd think he'd be a little more grateful after that," he said to Val.
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Alexander Pierce-Beales
Mostly just watch.
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Valentine Duell
August 19, 2020 1:55 PM
You could always try talking. by Valentine Duell
Valentine watched as Alexander kept into action. In no time at all he had freed his frog from her top… or maybe her top from his frog? She mentally shrugged, it wasn't that important. What was important was Alexander's success! He had done it! The toys were fixed. Almost, it looked like his frog had suffered a tragic injury at the... hands? of her top.He seemed to study the damage carefully for a moment, then he looked her way, waved his wand and the frog was as good as new again! He was good at this. She saw him smile a little at his success and she smiled warmly at him to reinforce it. She also couldn't restrain a giggle as he commented on the frog's ingratitude as it hopped away. "Well, I think you did a fantastic job." She stated trying to make up for the toy's lack of manners. "I know who I'm going to find the next time I have a broken frog."
Looking around she saw her top spinning off away from the direction his frog was going. Her heart sank a little, it had been fun chasing down the monster together. Now it looked like they were destined for separate paths. She felt a little bad about it, but kind of wished now that he hadn't been so successful. She held out her hand to him with a resigned smile, "Great job partner, with any luck our paths will cross again soon."
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Valentine Duell
You could always try talking.
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Josephine Clyde
September 07, 2020 5:43 AM
Hopping Hare (Tag Theo) by Josephine Clyde
Charms! YESSSS. Josie loved Charms last year, she loved it this year and she’d love it forever. Were there jobs that were Charms related? There was Professor Grayson, but as much as she loved her Head of House she wasn’t sure if she wanted to teach for the rest of her life. She wasn’t good at teaching. Learning? YES. But having to teach others? That wasn’t her strength by any means.Charms lessons were always the highlight of any day. Honestly, they could do nothing but review and that would still make her happy. But then Professor Grayson met everyone at the door and gave each person something small. Class hadn’t even started yet and it was different, a small difference, but still exciting.
“Thank you Professor!” Josie chirped as he handed her a stuffed bunny.
It was fluffy and cute and soft, everything a girl wanted in life. She clutched her bunny close and found a seat near the front of the room, shoving her other things underneath the table. Other students were still coming in so she took this opportunity to look at the bunny in more detail. The ears were made to have a permanent bend, making the head look like it had two sevens on top of it. Although the coat was a practical gray she could feel that it was made from good quality material and it was so soft.
Professor Grayson started speaking and she tore her attention away from the bunny to listen to the day’s lesson. Immobulus charm practice. She’d practiced that charm since the last class, this would be easy. Then the professor flicked his wand and all around her the room erupted into movement. Josie took a moment to admire the different types of movement and the chaos it brought with it.
She spent too much time admiring other people to notice that her bunny had bounced off the table and literally hopped away from her. Josie seized her wand and looked around wildly for it. There it was. Dodging the other people in the class she ran after her bouncing bunny. She steadied her wand hand to aim the charm at it when it disappeared behind someone. Josie looked up to see that her rabbit roadblock was none other than Theo.
“Theo, hi!”
She peered around him for the fleeing thing. Aha! There it was, hopping in place near the wall.
“Bye!”
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Josephine Clyde
Hopping Hare (Tag Theo)
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Theo Spurn
September 07, 2020 7:32 AM
All the soft things, true care truth brings by Theo Spurn
Professor Wright did not get very many hugs compared to some of the other professors. This was partly because he stood behind his desk all the time and partly because he was less soft than other people, and Theo wasn’t sure whether he wanted them. However, today everything was different. That was sometimes surprising and alarming, but the differences today seemed good. They included Professor Wright handing him a soft object and bringing himself within hugging range to do so, so Theo did. He was pretty sure it was rude not to hug someone when they gave you a soft thing, and he now had a little plushie dinosaur all of his very own to pet. It was made of the kind of short but intensely how-do-they-get-it-so-fuzzy fuzz. The kind that went best with stroking in one particular direction.Today they were playing with capturing their soft things! That was great! Every time he did well at class today, he would be rewarded with thirty seconds of snugging! That was a great lesson plan! He was very incentivised! All lessons should adopt this model! It was the softest! He let out some appreciative cheers as the lesson was described, continuing to pet the little green dino.
As class started, he took off enthusiastically after his dinosaur. It was a tall-o-saurus and it stood on just its back legs and ran like a cartoon. Watching it run delighted his heart, but less so than snuggling it would, so he took off earnestly in pursuit. He thought he had a good line of sight and was preparing to cast the spell when a little fuzzy bunny hopped past his legs, which was also just aww and softly distracting and distractingly soft. Then there was Josie.
“Hi!” he grinned, looking up at her. He didn’t quite have time to exclaim about how wonderful it was that there were soft things everywhere before she had gone again, just like the other soft things. He wanted to get his soft thing, and for Josie to get hers, and for her to be a soft thing too, and to just get them all together in one place where he could squish them all. He should not immobolise Josie though, but she would hopefully come and snuggle of her own volition.
He glanced around, finding the dinosaur. It scurried but it had tiny little legs and it couldn’t get very far very fast. It also didn’t really look like it wanted to. It was playing, but it wanted to be caught and snugged because that was its purpose. He helped it with that by shooting the freezing charm neatly at it.
“I win! I win thirty seconds of snugs!” he grinned, scooping it up and snuzzling his nose into it. He wandered over to Josie, grinning happily. “Did you win your first snugs yet?” he asked, leaning on her shoulder and smushing the dinosaur against her cheek because friends shared.
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Theo Spurn
All the soft things, true care truth brings
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Josephine Clyde
September 09, 2020 6:54 AM
What IS the truth? by Josephine Clyde
Mr. Bunnerton was trapped against a wall. There would be no escape! Josie whizzed past Theo’s greeting to properly corner Mr. Bunnerton. She’d go back and say hi again later. The game was on and she was not going to miss it. As she walked up to the trapped rabbit she pulled herself up tall and straight and looked down at him with an evil, happy grin.“So, Mr. Bunnerton, you thought you could out-bounce me?”
Her wand seemed to vibrate, sharing her excitement. Josie’s hand remembered the days of practice and cast the charm, cursing Mr. Bunnerton to 30 seconds of freezer time. The charm hit him and with an almost alive, startled twitch he fell to the ground motionless. Success! She picked him up and did a happy bounce of her own. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. She was still enjoying her victory when Theo came over and pushed his green dinosaur against her face.
“Hi again. I did! Mr. Bunnerton very foolishly trapped himself against the wall.”
Theo’s dinosaur was actually really soft. She pushed it back from her face with a gentle hand and stroked the top of its head. Super soft, even softer than Mr. Bunnerton, it was the perfect knickknack for Theo.
“Professor Grayson really knows what you like! Your dino is softer than my bunny.”
She was a little jealous that people, even professors, knew Theo well enough to adapt certain things and lessons to him. But the jealousy faded, it was a healthy kind. Her mother used to say that it was good to surround yourself with people who motivated you to be better and that usually involved some form of jealousy. Besides, Theo was awesome and wonderful and really huggable all the time. They were really great friends and she needed more of those in her life.
Besides, she knew all about friendly rivalries. Her step-brothers had one with each other for everything, though it wasn't always friendly. They both did team sports, so they were always fighting, challenging and growing with their teammates. She wanted that too with all her friends: Mara and Morgan, Jezebel and Gabriel, Sophia and even Leonor, but she wanted it most of all with Theo.
(OOC) Josie experiences the first NOT 'we're just friends' feeling towards Theo, but she doesn't realize it yet. *SMIRK*
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Josephine Clyde
What IS the truth?
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Theo Spurn
September 09, 2020 5:10 PM
Soft things by Theo Spurn
"Maybe he wanted to be caught," Theo suggested, as Josie explained that Mr. Bunnerton had got himself trapped by the wall. "I would too, if the result was snugs. There isn't really a very strong incentive to get away." It was equally possible that Mr. Bunnerton just had fluff for brains and had bounced himself into a tight spot. Or not been particularly tactical. Theo had brains for brains and that still happened to him sometimes - your brain just sort of went 'eep' and 'away' about the thing you were running from and you didn't necessarily think about what you were running into.He reached out a hand, petting Mr. Bunnerton.
"They are different sorts of soft," he stated fairly. Mr. Bumnerton had a deeper fuzz, so not quite so many individual prickles of softness were rubbed against your finger in any one stroke, but there was still fluffy niceness. "He's best if you stroke him down instead of up," he compared.
That was all they had time for before the toys leapt to life again. Dino sprung out of his hand, toddling away on its little plushie legs. He supposed he could try holding onto it extra hard next time but that seemed like cheating. He would win his hugs fair and square.
"Ooh, see you next freeze," he told Josie, giving her a quick squeeze before heading off in pursuit of his dinosaur.
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Theo Spurn
Soft things
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Josephine Clyde
September 13, 2020 11:21 PM
That IS a universal truth, yes. by Josephine Clyde
Yes, snuggles were excellent. Made sense. If Josie were to get hugs from Theo, more than she already did, then she’d let herself be caught on purpose too. She looked Mr. Bunnerton and silently told him to hop like his life depended on it once freezer time was over. For now, she’d enjoy stroking his fur in the direction Theo suggested. It really was nicer than what she’d done earlier. Theo was such a texture master. His dinosaur came back to life and one hug later he was off chasing after it again. That meant Mr. Bunnerton would come back to life soon.She placed the bunny in front of her, ignoring the chaos all around and watched it with narrowed eyes. This time she’d pretend to be a police officer chasing a fuzzy villain. Mr. Bunnerton practically sprint-hopped away and Josie kindly gave him a head start before she joined in the chase.
Mr. Bunnerton was too nice a name for a criminal. Barry Bunny sounded sinister enough.
“You stop right there, Barry Bunny! There’s nowhere left for you to run!” Josie shouted internally.
She imagined they were weaving between buildings, down dark alleys and through little clusters of homeless people. It was nighttime and of course it was raining with only streetlamps to pierce the darkness. Her gun clutched in her hand as a physical reminder of the justice waiting for Barry. A tail here, the echo of a frantic hop there, their game of cops and robbers would soon come to an end.
When she jumped over a stray backpack or avoided another student it added to chase sequence in her head. For one brief moment she saw Barry Bunny illuminated beneath the light of a streetlamp and her gun locked on to his round cottontail and fired.
“Immobulus!”
Barry Bunny fell to the ground, caught by the law at last. Officer Josie ran over to his unmoving body, picked him and hugged him. That was fun! Mr. Bunnerton had leaped rather close to one of the lights in the room and the way it lit him up was exactly like putting a spotlight on him. She cuddled him in one arm as she pondered which chase scenario to do next. Lion and zebra? Pirates? Oh! Pirates reminded her of Theo. Her head whipped around the classroom looking for him. Had he been as successful as Officer Josie had?
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Josephine Clyde
That IS a universal truth, yes.
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