Isis Carter-Xavier
October 02, 2021 2:55 PM
A ghoulishly fun scavenger hunt (Adv.) by Isis Carter-Xavier
“Please make sure to turn in your essays as you take your seat,” Isis reminded her advanced students as they entered. They had a week to write two feet of parchment on two out of three of the unforgivable curses and their known historical implementations. She anticipated there would be a lot who selected the imperius curse and the cruciatus curse, as there would be more meat to the history. The killing curse was pretty straight forward, and Isis had never heard of anyone surviving its use. There had been a rumor once, but that was all.“As you’re well aware, while this class focuses primarily on spells, we also have a few dark creatures to cover. Today will be a creature day,” Isis announced once it seemed everyone who intended to come had arrived. She closed the classroom door with a flick of her wand. “Now, this is asking a bit much, but has anyone read ahead at all yet in the text and can describe to the class what a chameleon ghoul is?”
It was fair, of course, if no one could. In the event someone could, she would award them points and correct if/where necessary. If not, she would give the explanation herself: that a chameleon ghoul is much like other ghouls, but that these ones had the ability to disguise themselves as ordinary and mundane items to avoid detection.
“We have one of these ghouls among us today,” Isis stated. “Your task will be to identify it and subdue it. The section in your book is on page 412, which you are to read tonight as homework. Chameleon ghouls are classified as “XX” so it is unlikely it will cause you harm when you find it - you should be able to defend yourselves quite easily at this point. So buddy up and start looking. House points and a five percent grade boost on your essays to the ones who find the ghoul!”
OOC: There isn’t a ton of information on the wiki about these ghouls, so feel free to get reasonably creative. Have fun!
https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Chameleon_Ghoul
12
Isis Carter-Xavier
A ghoulishly fun scavenger hunt (Adv.)
31
1
5
Jeremy Mordue
October 06, 2021 10:46 AM
Not really by Jeremy Mordue
There was probably some theory along the lines that exposing the students to the dark arts, in the form of all the things wrong with them, would make them not want to get involved. Much more so than keeping them locked up as Big Mysterious Secrets That You Definitely Oughtn’t Look At. This theory was somewhat borne out by Jeremy’s homework. However casually he’d wished that he could crucio his brother or uncle when they got on his nerves, reading about actual historical cases had put that wish into perspective. Perhaps not enough to make him really think about his words - after all, there were all manner of perfectly legal curses he could fantasise about using on them, but never actually would, so continuing to envisage the unforgivables as an idle threat wasn’t really changed by the experience. He just had been a bit creeped out by some of what he’d read. There were some cases, of course, where it was justified, but he had left those opinions out of his essay, more or less, seeing as the person grading him was bound to disagree with that logic. Urgh, he couldn’t wait to be done with this place and the way it repressed people like him.The lesson took a sharp steer away from unforgiveables, and curses in general, as they moved onto chameleon ghouls, with instructions no more specific than ‘partner up and start looking.’ How exactly? Were they to go around poking every object in the room until one of them tried to bite? There had to be a better way - a more magical way. ‘Homenum revelio’ obviously wasn’t going to cut it, as it wasn’t a homenum. Dark spell detection was also useless as it was a creature, not a spell. One that was currently cloaking itself, which would probably make most basic spells ineffective. Hence it was in advanced class. It wasn’t a huge threat, just a sneaky one.
Jeremy flicked open the textbook to the relevant page, because even if that had been mentioned as homework, he wanted to know what he was up against now.
Detection of the chameleon ghoul has always been a challenge. Ugbert the Odd was the first to propose a solution in 1756, noting that a blast of fire across the room would usually flush the ghoul out. Unfortunately, it has the same immunity to bluebell flame as magical people, and so real fire had to be used - the effect of Ugbert’s solution was to see what rose from the scorched remains of all one’s worldly possessions. Needless to say, this was not popular… Jeremy tried to refrain from groaning or rolling his eyes. Why did the books have to go on and on in this fashion? Obviously setting a room on fire was a stupid idea, as was every subsequent thing that Ugbert proposed, even if it was increasingly freaking tempting. It looked like the narrative went on for a fair few paragraphs, and flicking quickly through the pages, he didn’t see any definitive signs of an actual answer.
What some people might have taken from this was that wizards didn’t always have the answer. What Jeremy took from this class was that it was tedious and beneath him. Given that he wouldn’t routinely be scanning his house for chameleon ghouls, he would either find out about one when it chose to make itself known, or - if he had reason to suspect one of being present - call in pest control. If he caught one in the act of being ghoulish, he could vanquish it with what he’d learnt. If he didn’t catch it, it would be someone else’s job.
He flicked another page. One of the ridiculous ideas caught his eye… It had the benefit of being possible without causing mass damage and destruction - at least, nothing that a house elf couldn’t clean up. And it was a magical solution.
“Ellicio pulveris” he cast, waving his wand over a selection of items in the corner of the room. A thin film of dust sprinkled from his wand, and he sat back to wait and see whether any of the items began sneezing or showing other signs of discomfort.
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Jeremy Mordue
Not really
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