I have questions (tag Oz). on Charms

Grayson Wright

November 09, 2020 12:12 PM

I have questions (tag Oz). by Grayson Wright

After class, Gray bade the first and second years farewell, reminding them to make sure they had the handouts and to remember their book next lesson – and, when the right set of hair paired with the right House badge passed by (these two matters were crucial for distinguishing the child from his brother, as they were otherwise identical-looking; he counted himself fortunate that they were in different Houses), stopped Oscar Spellman.

“Hang back a moment, please,” he instructed the Pecari boy. “I’d like a word.”

He had thought about this at some length during class. He saw little point to punishing students over matters no more consequential than that interruption – his main reason was that he didn’t think it was a very good response, but it was also not least because he did not think he had the force of personality to maintain that kind of classroom atmosphere anyway – and calling him out in front of the entire class had no doubt been punishment enough for most people. That left him with two options, and he’d had time to weigh them, though not time enough to decide for sure. However, he was given to over-analyzing things anyway, so odds were that he would have taken some days to feel confident about a path of action, and one thing he had learned since coming back to Sonora was that often, one had to just to do something and hope for the best.

“I won’t keep you long,” he assured Oz after the class had gone out. “You are Oscar, yes? Not Henry?” He had taken the time to look at each kid’s face and badge during roll call, but had taken extra care with those two, knowing fixing their Houses into his head was going to be important. “Yes. Won’t keep you long, just had a couple of questions about the things you mentioned at the beginning of class. Did I get the description…more or less right, with what matches are?” he asked. “And what is a ‘lighter’? Do you use it with matches, or…?” He slightly raised his eyebrows in inquiry, his expression one of politely pleasant curiosity.

16 Grayson Wright I have questions (tag Oz). 113 1 5

Oz Spellman

November 10, 2020 4:08 AM

Is this a trap? by Oz Spellman

Hang back. I'd like a word.

Oz froze, as instructed. He really hadn't thought much more about his interruptions. Usually, if a teacher was mad at you, they said it then and there, doling out your punishment to try and deter others. He had got on with the rest of class pretty well, and could now even make his wand do the lighting up thing. It seemed deeply unfair that he was about to get into trouble. He hadn't even really done anything. Nothing that was a big deal anyway. He crossed his arms, his face falling into a frown, his body tight and his shoulders hunched up. As he faced Mr. Wright, he was the picture of anger and defiance. The only place it didn't quite reach was his eyes. He pushed his brows down, frowning at the teacher, whilst his eyes desperately searched the person he was glaring at for any signs of how badly he was about to be in trouble.

"Yeah," he stated, irritation replacing his other emotions, flashing over his face for a moment as he was asked to confirm he was who he was. "It's not that hard-" he pressed his lips together, cutting off his own annoyance. "Yessir," he mumbled instead, making eye contact with the floor and hitching the frown back in place as he waited to be lectured.

It didn't happen. Instead Mr. Wright was asking him questions. About matches and lighters.

"You what?" he gaped. "Um...yeah?" he confirmed regarding matches. He couldn't remember what exactly Mr. Wright had said but it had sounded accurate if weird. "And no, a lighter is - you're for real?" he asked, staring slightly suspiciously. "You click it and it makes fire," he explained, conveying the approximate size and accompanying gesture by miming. "It's like a tube with fuel in, and you click it. People mostly use them for lighting cigarettes. Know what those are?" he asked a little cheekily, giving an up and down of Mr. Wright's tie and glasses. He didn't look like he knew what anything fun was. Not that cigarettes were fun. They were expensive and bad for you, and Oz should definitely not try them regardless of what anyone else said. He trusted that Mom was right about that and he definitely didn't want to be addicted to cigarettes but he did have to pretend it was cool when his friends claimed to have nicked them from their parents or older siblings and smoked them.

His gaze returned to the teacher's face, his expression somewhat guarded. It seemed too good to be true that Mr. Wright just wanted to hold him back to ask what a lighter was. He thought about asking 'Is that all?' but he didn't want to give him a reminder that he might have something else to say.

"So, can I go now?" he asked instead. His tone betrayed him. It conveyed some of his doubt that that going to be the case - the word 'or...' hung almost palpably at the end of his sentence. Even so, he tried taking a half step back away from the teacher.

13 Oz Spellman Is this a trap? 1514 0 5

Grayson Wright

November 11, 2020 8:20 PM

No. by Grayson Wright

He wasn’t sure he could really say he had a good representative sample of Oscar Spellman’s speech patterns and preferences yet, but from what he had seen, they seemed to be…straightforward, to put it succinctly. Putting things succinctly was not one of Gray’s outstanding talents, but he could manage it in a pinch. Accordingly, when asked if he was ‘for real’ (it was strangely reassuring, somehow, to hear the youth still using the same phrases he’d been familiar with back in the day), he nodded and responded, “Yes,” without elaborating further.

The explanation…he was not entirely sure if it made sense or not. That was not the purpose of the exercise, of course – he could hit the library later and try to figure it out if he decided he really needed to know – but it was still intriguing. It sounded a bit like fireworks, except that fireworks had to be activated with a wand, and he had no idea, after all, what was inside fireworks. It was possible that igniting them activated a passive charm, or broke down something preventing the contents from exploding…assuming the contents were a potion or the like, rather than a sort of compressed charm. Magical fire was the thing that set them off, but magical fire did a lot of things, in different cases, and depending on which precise spell one used, it could have many different properties. His understanding was that the spell he’d use to light a candle or a firework produced essentially the same result as Muggle methods of igniting a fire, but he wasn’t even totally sure of that – the only things he could say for sure about Muggle fires was that they required direct contact between objects to create sparks, and that they required things like candle wicks or the ends of torches to form – they required ‘fuel’ of some kind in a way that magical fire did not, or at least did not in a way he thought Muggles would readily understand –

He didn’t quite laugh when asked if he knew what cigarettes were, but the manner in which he exhaled was clearly amused. “Yes, I do,” he said. “Unless they are something different in the Muggle world – I’m guessing you’re Muggleborn? To the best of my knowledge, though, they are pieces of dried tobacco wrapped in paper.“

This was the issue, though, which he felt he ought to get through to Oscar – especially before he met some of his classmates, or even some of the stricter teachers…He thought Oscar was fortunate that Tabitha in particular was absent, but if he had nearly been thrown off-stride by the interruptions, he couldn’t see Selina or probably Lawrence taking to them at all. Even Mortimer, however, might take better to them than some of the other students (Jeremy Mordue flashed through his mind, though how Jeremy should cross paths with a Pecari first year, he couldn’t say) would, if he kept up like this….

“I’m sure things here are…very strange to you,” he said when asked for permission to flee. “I can hardly imagine going into the Muggle world – so I should have been more careful about referring to something from it,” he acknowledged. “But as a rule, you should probably say your piece after professors finish their sentences, not in the middle of them, and you can probably assume most of the time that we aren’t pulling your leg, hm? The background you come from is as strange to many of us as ours is to you. Just something to keep in mind. You may go now.”

Hopefully Oscar would settle down on his own, once he settled into his new school and new role. Hopefully there was no organic or trauma-related reason for his showing so many emotions in one morning, from laughter to scowling suspicion. Hopefully, if those first circumstances didn’t work out favorably, there was some simple accommodation that could help them all work around it…hopefully. For now, he had to get ready for his next class.

16 Grayson Wright No. 113 0 5

Oz Spellman

November 11, 2020 9:08 PM

Shows what you know by Oz Spellman

"Ten outta ten," Oz muttered, when Mr. Wright correctly (but like a total nerd) described a cigarette.

For about half a second, it seemed like Mr. Wright was kinda okay. Like, he was obviously a dork and Oz didn't really want to talk to him, but what he was saying was okay. For all of half a second. Then he was telling Oz off again, and calling him weird. He had sort of known the first part of that was coming when he was asked to stay behind, but it still sucked.

"I know," he huffed, when Mr. Wright told him he shouldn't interrupt - rather proving it was a lesson he still hadn't learnt by cutting him off to say it. But Mr. Wright had already called him out in class, he didn't have to do it again. The insult stung more than he would have liked to admit. Why was it he could never spot trouble until he was in it? Why couldn't he work out who were the wrong people to talk to until they were already deep in conversation? He tried to excuse it that Mr. Wright had been harder to spot - teachers weren't meant to say directly mean things to students. They did sometimes, of course, but it didn't stop it being surprising and sucky when adults refused to play by the rules. And he wasn't just calling Oz weird, but calling Mom weird too, after already talking about her like she was some caveperson who sat around banging rocks together to light fires. He'd been warned, of course, by Netflix Cop that people here might think like that. Understanding systemic racism was not one of the battlegrounds he had fought on personally, and his limited, eleven year old understanding of what Netflix Cop had been saying was that other kids might be jerks about this. He hadn't expected an adult to be a jerk about it. Sure, he expected them to suck in other ways, but this part came as a shock.

"My life's not-" he glared, but with another effort he bit it back. Mr. Wright had given him permission to go. He thought vaguely that he should defend his mom, and he felt bad for not doing it. But thinking of his mom, he knew the one bit of advice she gave him over and over - the one thing she would want him to do more than anything else. Oz. Please, for your own sake, can you learn not to run your mouth?

"Good," he stated, in response to Mr. Wright's dismissal, grabbing his bag and heading for the door as quickly as he could before the teacher changed his mind. "Cos I don't wanna talk to you anyway!" he yelled, as he slammed the door behind him.

He had... he had another class now. And no idea which way to go, though he was not about to hang around outside Mr. Wright's room whilst he worked it out. But he was probably going to be late, and be in trouble - which was unfair because then he was getting in trouble for being in trouble. Not that that was the only reason why Mr. Wright had wanted to talk to him. Not that he thought anyone would believe him if he told them. Or at least, he wouldn't be able to tell whichever teacher they had next, and everyone else would probably assume he'd just been getting busted. So much for a fresh start.

13 Oz Spellman Shows what you know 1514 0 5

Henry Spellman

November 12, 2020 12:03 PM

I know you're trying. by Henry Spellman

Henry couldn't really stay angry with Oz for long, especially when the rest of class demonstrated that he didn't have to go and be obnoxious all the time. Plus, at the end of the day, Henry knew Oz didn't mean to. He just didn't always think. Plus, wand measuring was funny, even if Henry would never admit it. When Oz got held back, Henry let the rest of his class go on without either of them. He hadn't really made any friends yet, so it wasn't such a bummer anyway, and his only real concern was being late to their next class. He wasn't exactly sure how punishments were doled out here or if Oz would be held back long enough to miss the next period altogether, but Henry figured he could at least wait to see. There was a really really good chance that Oz hadn't taken as much time as Henry had to memorize the schedule and map, so he probably didn't know where he was going next. Also, the charms professor seemed fully capable of turning Oz into a match for questioning it - the quiet ones were the scary ones, or so he liked to believe - so at least this way he could carry his matchstick brother to the next class. If there was anything left of him . . . maybe he'd just be used for lighting bad essays on fire from now on or something.

Henry's anxiety rose tremendously over the short span that Oz remind behind the charms' classroom door and the relief he felt to see Oz come out alive was only mildly marred by finding him shouting and huffing and being a wad about it. Still, he was a human boy, and Henry counted that as a win.

As Oz took in his surroundings, Henry approached. "Transfiguration next," he said softly. Once, there had been a time when Henry had given Oz a hard time when he got in trouble. Sometimes he still took their mom's side in giving him a hard time about it. For the past several years, though, he hadn't done that so much. There was just no reason to and he knew that. He felt a little bad for Oz sometimes even. Sure, he was honest about it and it wasn't like he pretended that Oz wasn't being dense or whatever, but there was no reason to beat up on him about it. Sometimes, the best thing you could do for someone after a bad time, even if that bad time was their own fault, was get them a scoop of peanut butter straight from the jar and let them steam. Trouble was just Oz. He attracted it like a magnet, even when he probably didn't mean to, and Henry tried to keep that in mind. If Henry got in trouble, now that was something to write home about. Except hopefully not literally because mom didn't need to know. "It's that way," he added, pointing down the appropriate hallway.

22 Henry Spellman I know you're trying. 1513 0 5

Oz Spellman

November 15, 2020 5:37 PM

Yeah, trying everyone's patience by Oz Spellman

So, it turned out, he wasn't totally alone right now. It was almost startling to find Henry in such close proximity. They had been apart for several days now - or, he supposed several years, depending on how you counted. When they had been younger, Oz had loved nothing more than their twinness. They had played swapsies, pretending to be each other, even if it was usually immediately obvious to anyone who knew anything about them - Oz was the one bursting with excitement over the fun they were having, whilst Henry was the one who, if he was laughing at all, was doing so nervously, not wanting to get in trouble. They sometimes liked different things but that had been a secret, and Oz had come up with a list of their official favourite everything that was all the same. It hadn't been like that for the last two years though. For the last two years, Oz had pushed back. They had to look different. They were different. Where their favourites really were the same, Henry had to pick a new one. And Henry absolutely had to get out of his face. There was only so far you could push someone away when you lived in the same one bedroom apartment though. He could ignore Henry, he could tell him to butt out or mind his own business, but at the times they had to be home, there was only so far he could take it. Now they were here, in this stupid huge school the size of a small shopping mall. After eleven years of sharing, they had been put into separate bedrooms. After eleven years of eating side by side on the couch or on a freecycled card table, they were being forced to eat their meals apart from each other. He had wanted and wanted Henry to go away, and now someone had made it that he really could and it hurt so much.

He was kinda surprised to find Henry was still there. Not that it meant he wanted him to be here now.

"What are you doing here?" he glared, as they set off in the direction his brother had indicated.

13 Oz Spellman Yeah, trying everyone's patience 1514 0 5

Henry Spellman

November 17, 2020 4:05 PM

Only because you're impatient. by Henry Spellman

Henry didn't scowl when his brother was rude to him because his brother was often rude to him and it was just sort of how he communicated. It wasn't really a good way to communicate, but it got the job done. Angry Oz asking questions usually meant he was also feeling curious or wondering at something. Angry Oz making fun of him usually meant he was tired or hungry or embarrassed or something else was going on at the same time. Stuff like that. Everyone had tells and Henry knew Oz's best of all.

"I didn't know if the teacher was going to turn you into a match," he said with a shrug. "Figured I'd stick around to see if I should get a box to keep you in for Christmas," he added a little more sarcastically, because sarcasm was usually a pretty okay defense in life. It communicated something too but Henry tried not to think about that. He was the quiet one, the shy one, the reserved one, but humor and sarcasm were meat and potatoes in the Spellman house, sometimes because they couldn't actually afford real meat and potatoes. If you were gonna stick up for yourself without getting punched in the face at school, you had to be sharper than the bigger kid, and show you weren't afraid. If you were gonna try to make your brother or your mom feel better about a bad day when nothing you could say would really make it better, you had to be funnier than the bad thing and show you weren't afraid. It was just how the world worked.

Of course, that didn't mean they didn't all see through it, at least at home. Henry knew there was a good chance that Henry stuck around because he'd been scared and because he figured that if Oz survived in the same shape he featured in now, he wouldn't know where he was going. But why say stuff that Oz already knew, especially if it was probably just going to irritate him? So he didn't. He led them down a left turn instead, and let his sarcasm hang in the air for a response.

22 Henry Spellman Only because you're impatient. 1513 0 5

Oz Spellman

November 19, 2020 7:19 PM

At least I'm not a matchstick by Oz Spellman

Oz was not sure whether what he had asked had been a rhetorical question. That was one of a few fancy English terms he knew. He knew other stuff by its definition, like you were meant to care whether a bunch of stuff began with the same letters or whatever, but that one he knew because it got busted out a lot outside of English assignments. That was a rhetorical question, Oz/Archer/Whoever. He hadn’t actually meant to get an answer this time, he had meant ‘you shouldn’t be here’ but he couldn’t deny that the answer was sort of interesting and worth having.

“Oh,” he stated, almost stopping for a second, but quickly recovering himself as they had class to get to. He had very much been thinking about how he’d pissed off a teacher not a full grown fricking wizard. “Do you reckon they can do that?” he asked. He knew Henry’s tone was joking and sarcastic but for all he knew that was a real possibility.

He maintained some semblance of a scowl and a grumpy air because Henry was not supposed to hang around him like this. It was good that he wasn’t lost, or late, and that Henry cared about whether he got turned into a matchstick or not, and part of him knew he should say something about that. Something like ‘thank you’ or like ‘I’m glad you hung around’ except that he couldn’t do that without giving Henry the impression he wanted him to be here or that this had been the right call, and it wasn’t.

“I don’t think he likes people like us much,” he added. Henry probably had some weird tendency to trust teachers. Oz supposed he had a lot fewer reasons not to. But if Mr. Wright thought Muggles were “weird” then that extended to Henry just as much as it did Oz, and he needed to know. Oz wanted him to be careful.

13 Oz Spellman At least I'm not a matchstick 1514 0 5

Henry Spellman

November 20, 2020 8:36 PM

I don't think you have yourself to thank for that good fortune. by Henry Spellman

OOC: CW: Implied reference to gun violence. BIC:

Henry noticed Oz' hesitation but didn't say anything. The moments Oz hesitated were the moments that something had gotten through to him and sometimes that was really good, and other times that was really bad. Like when they'd been walking home one day and Oz got too interested in a conversation he shouldn't have paid attention to. He'd only looked at the two guys curiously but Henry was the one who noticed the way one of them reached into the back of his jeans, like maybe he had something there. They'd gotten out of there and Oz had hesitated when Henry explained what he thought he'd seen. What had almost happened. That had been a bad thing. But maybe this was a good thing. Maybe Oz was hesitating because he was getting it. This world was bigger than they were and they had to figure that out one way or another just to survive. Yeah, the food was better here, but the odds of survival seemed at least as low as in central Phoenix.

His eyes got round though when Oz asked if he really thought that was a thing that could happen. "Yes," he said definitively, sending a little hollow. "I read ahead and-- it doesn't matter. But they can turn us into a lot of stuff. There's spells that would make us forget everything or just forget one or two things, spells that would make us shrink so small we'd disappear, spells that would make us sick. And that's not to mention the potions and stuff." He paused to think about it and then to stop thinking about it because it was too much to think about. "I don't know if they'd do that because you were loud though," he admitted.

It was a euphemism that had come up before, because it was easier to say Oz was loud than to say he'd been mouthy, or inappropriate, or rude, especially if Mom asked. Henry wanted Oz to get himself together, but he also didn't totally blame him when he didn't, and he definitely didn't want Mom to be more worried than she already was when she got the next detention notice or the next warning from a teacher.

Henry looked a little sideways at his brother when he suggested Professor Wright didn't like people like them. That could mean a lot of things but he doubted it was some weird sort of hatred of twins or something, and he thought he probably knew exactly what it meant. He'd have to be a fool to be in Crotalus and not notice some of the looks he got. Heck, maybe he was imagining it, but he was pretty sure that kids with Muggle parents weren't liked that much.

He sighed, feeling deflated; he'd never really had teachers not like him before. At least, not after they stopped associating him too closely with Oz. He always hated them then, but he didn't say so because that wasn't something you were supposed to say to teachers.

"I don't know if we can trust this place anymore than we could trust anyone before," he said quietly, feeling bitter. They'd never really been able to trust adults because adults only came knocking if they wanted money or to take them away or something, never to help them. The only adults who'd ever helped them were Mom and a few odd teachers here and there, but even the teachers eventually let go and the system moved Henry and Oz right through. "I wish we could just say we have some really powerful wizard for a dad and then we'd know they would leave us alone," he said, thinking of his cards. A good deceit, a good poker face, a good show . . . that's how you won at Magic.

22 Henry Spellman I don't think you have yourself to thank for that good fortune. 1513 0 5

Oz Spellman

November 24, 2020 4:53 PM

I never do when something's going right by Oz Spellman

Magic was sometimes not cool. Oz sort of knew that from the fact they had a combat class (something he thought was likely to become his main exception to not working with or generally hanging around Henry in public). But it had still felt for the most part like it was a good thing. He missed Mom but he could recognise that where they were, they had a lot more going for them. Except maybe there were just a whole bunch of dangers that he didn’t know about yet. At home, he knew all the things he was not supposed to get into. Even then, he’d struggled at times maintaining as much distance from them as he’d like. Here though… How could he avoid trouble if he didn’t know what it looked like?

“That’d be good,” he agreed, regarding Wizard Dad. And for all they knew, they did have one. Something vague nagged at the back of his brain saying that he didn’t want to say that, but he was eleven and not exactly used to articulate debate on social justice, so he couldn’t even form it into a real thought; namely, that he didn’t actually want that because it shouldn’t have been necessary to need to hide behind something like that, and their Mom was every bit as valid a parenting combo as anyone else out there, and that the ideal would be a system that recognised that instead. Though Oz would not have been naive enough to think that was a viable thing to believe in even if he’d been able to conceptualise it. Wizard dad would still be an appealing bit of firepower until the world sorted itself out. As it was, it just nagged at the back of his brain like a vague feeling of guilt and discomfort, but one that didn’t make sense to him. “People would call bull on that in five seconds flat though… right?” he checked. ‘I wish’ was totally not the same as ‘We should…’

13 Oz Spellman I never do when something's going right 1514 0 5

Henry Spellman

November 24, 2020 6:51 PM

That's not true . . . you know that's not true, right? by Henry Spellman

Henry considered. Everything he'd found so far seemed to suggest that the wizarding community was small enough that everyone knew everyone else, especially the big shots, and especially especially the 'pureblood' shots. He was pretty sure if you started throwing around words like 'pureblood' in their old school, you'd get detention. Assuming, of course, you could survive the walk to the principal's office when everyone found out what you said. Here, that seemed to be a pretty normal way of classifying folks.

"I don't think we know enough about magic," Henry frowned, going with the logical route that felt a little less based in eugenics or something because that felt gross. "We wouldn't be able to explain how we had some big powerful dad and no knowledge of this place without having to get into detail about living with just mom and then it would fall apart." He wrinkled his nose at another thought. "I wouldn't want to accidentally claim we're related to most of these people either, honestly. It would be nice if we could say that but not nice if it meant we had to pretend we were cousins with the headmaster or something. There's like a dozen of kids here with the same last name and who knows which other families their related to." He gave a little shiver, showing exactly what he thought of that. Of course, it wasn't exactly what he thought of that, because he was also jealous.

They'd never had cousins or a big family or anything like that. Sure, the whole thing screamed nepotism and some other not so nice things, but it also sounded like it was easier. Maybe there was such a thing as too much of something good; folks who had it too easy weren't exactly the sort that Henry wanted to spend time around. "Sorry," he muttered, thinking he'd probably irritated his brother, even if it was good information to have on hand. "That was a long answer."

22 Henry Spellman That's not true . . . you know that's not true, right? 1513 0 5

Oz Spellman

December 02, 2020 8:30 PM

No comment by Oz Spellman

Wizard dad was definitely not shaping up into an actual plan. It was a shame. The thought of conspiring on their cover story brought back happy memories. Their were some things Oz and Henry agreed on, and quite a lot that they didn't, but whatever privately held opinions they had had over the best milkshake flavour or favourite cartoon characters, Oz had insisted on a carefully curated list of shared favourites that they told other people. There had been no 'yours' and 'mine' only 'ours.' It had made it easier when they pretended to be each other too, no one could catch them out with a question they didn't know the answer to.

"Could look 'em all dead in the eyes and just state really serious like You don't know who my dad is, do you? like they should. And then they can go off and gossip or Google us- or... Wizard Google us, and try to work it out. And it's not like we lied," he grinned. Except... Except it wasn't the old days any more. They didn't plan together. There were very much Oz's things and Henry's and they were not the same. "Or that's what I'd do. Don't copy," he glared, for all that it had been Henry's suggestion in the first place.

And then Henry apologised. Oz was initially not sure why. But apparently Henry now felt that talking was something he needed to apologise for. Oz guessed that wasn't surprising, given the way he acted towards him. He should come up with something to say to that. Something that told Henry he shouldn't apologise, and that what was in his head mattered, and Oz wanted to hear it. But everything he could think of sounded like an invitation to Henry to try to be closer to him again.

"Whatever," he shrugged, meaning it to come out more like 'it doesn't matter' but pretty sure it sounded like 'I am bored of listening to you.' There wasn't much he could add to that, and anyway they were now at the Transfiguration classroom. Where Henry had got him, without mishap, more or less on time. It seemed like people were still trickling in, maybe having stopped off at the bathroom or just dawdled. They weren't noticably late or about to have to explain themselves or get in trouble again. Thanks to Henry. Another thing he should say, out loud...

"See ya," Oz muttered instead, sliding into the middle row. Most of the seats were full anyway, so it wasn't like they could have sat together, even if they had wanted to. And Oz didn't.

13 Oz Spellman No comment 1514 0 5