Giselle Duell
February 19, 2022 8:26 PM
One for the birds [Advanced Divinations] by Giselle Duell
The door to the Divinations classroom was closed, and the room inside was empty save for the normal diving tools and equipment. The only sign of activity was the steaming pot of water that had been left by a stack of teacups. There was however, a note stuck to the door addressed to the advanced class.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advanced Diviniations will not be taking place in the classroom today.
I will begin class in 10 minutes, and expect you all to be on time.
Professor Duell
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Giselle had perfect confidence in her advanced students. They had practiced divining a person’s location and interpreting symbolism enough that they shouldn’t have any trouble finding her. She wondered what methods they might use, while she waited just outside the school’s owlery.
As they found her she welcomed and congratulated them before getting on with the subject of today’s lesson. “Today we begin our section on Ornithomancy, which is the practice of divining from birds. As we will get into in later lessons, meanings can be derived from types of birds you see as well as the directions and methods of their flight and the sounds they make. For today’s introduction we will keep things simple, however later lessons will take place outside for wider practice.” She turned and opened the doors to the owlery, she didn’t really expect any of the students to be surprised that there were owls inside.
“As you may have either guessed or divined,” she let the corner of her lip curl in the hint of a smile, “We will be working with owls. Owls in general represent magic or wisdom. There is a reason that wizards use them to carry messages after all. However, when an owl hoots three times, that may be foretelling a major change, or perhaps an impending death.” She let the words trail off for dramatic effect, then turned and walked into the owlery proper. This was one of those times she thought she was glad that she couldn’t see what she was stepping in.
“Today however, we will only concern ourselves with an owl's flight pattern." She stopped in the middle and turned back to her students. "These patterns hold true for most birds, they are not specific to owls. Interpreting flight is most often used to determine what your path may look like to reach a goal. The technique we will be practicing today would normally be done out in the open where you might expect to find birds, however..." she gestured towards the openings leading outside. On the other side the torrential downpour of rain was easily apparent. "So we will make do with observing the owls inside today. Their flights will be short as they move about inside, but hopefully you will be able to glean something interesting from the exercise." Giselle waved her wand and papers flew out to everyone, they had a very basic list on them.
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1. Flying horizontally indicates that you will ultimately reach your goal, but there will be hardship along the way.
2. Flight from right to left indicates that you will reach your desired goal with little friction or problems.
3. Flight from left to right indicates that there will be obstacles in your path, and that you may need to reevaluate your plans or ask for advice.
4. A bird flying straight towards you indicates that your situation will improve, and fair fortune and happiness lies ahead.
5. Flight that is both high and fast (or straight up) indicates quick and profound success.
6. Hurried flight away from your current position indicates that you should continue with caution, or even delay your plans and regroup.
7. Landing and taking off several times or erratic flight indicates a need for a change of plans due to unseen problems.
8. Taking off but changing direction mid-flight indicates that flexibility will be needed, and a charge of heart or circumstances may lie ahead.
9. Flying against the wind indicates a possible trickster in your life. Someone is not as they appear to be, and you may need to watch your back.
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"These are just the very basics, and your book goes into more detail, but we will only worry about that later. For today, I want you all to pick a goal that you would like to achieve and then find the correct owl to watch. Let yourself feel for the right connection. Having done that, observe your owl and make notes. See what the owl is telling you about the journey you have ahead of you to reach the goal you have chosen. You may begin." She began as well. She didn't know if there was more she needed to do with this whole Xavier situation, but maybe the owls could tell her. 'I want to help resolve the Xavier issue.' she thought to herself and then cast about to find an owl that might hold an answer. One called out to her... then took off and almost immediately changed it's flight direction before landing again and repeating the performance. Giselle sighed.
2
Giselle Duell
One for the birds [Advanced Divinations]
1517
1
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Anya Delachene
February 22, 2022 9:56 AM
Who Who? by Anya Delachene
As was her norm, while many of her classmates were in Advanced Transfiguration, Anya pulled out her crystal ball to determine where she should sit in Divination class later that day, that might net her somebody else's graded paper. The way that had seen the most success in doing that was to determine where somebody else was going to sit, and steal their seat. It was not infallible. Sometimes Professor Duell did her reading after Anya made this determination, and accounted for the change, but there wasn't enough time between CoMC and Div most days to do it right before class, but it had worked once, which was once better than any of her other options. So she sat on her bed, crystal ball in her lap, and waved a hand over the device. "Where will Freddie be sitting today in Divinations?" she asked it, out loud, and peered into the cloudy depths.With practice, she had become rather adept at this form of divining, if she did say so herself, so she was a bit surprised to find the answer coming back to her as an image of Freddie standing in the owlery. Was he going to skip class today or something? Did something happen and he needed to write to his family urgently?
When she happened to pass her brother in the hallway heading to her first after lunch class, she pulled him aside and peppered Philippe with questions about his boyfriend to make sure they hadn't broken up or anything crazy, but Philippe seemed to think everything was normal, so she just told him to check in with Freddie when he had a chance, and went on to Charms. Philippe had some kind of the sympathetic Teppenpaw method of asking questions that came across as friendly and interested, but when Anya tried the same thing, it always came across as brash and nosy.
Freddie was in her charms class, and he seemed fine and just as normal as Philippe said he was. She didn't want to be brash and nosy if something was wrong, so she didn't ask when he was doing such a good job of acting like nothing was wrong. Also, it was possible he just didn't know yet about whatever was going to send him to the owlery later, and she didn't want to worry him. Same went for CoMC. He still seemed totally like his normal self there, too.
Then she got to the Divinations classroom, mildly confused because she was walking with Freddie to that location, and she knew he wasn't going to be attending divinations today because he was going to be in the owlery, and that was when she saw the sign.
"OH!" she shouted, laughing and relieved. She turned on her heel, grabbed Freddie by the arm, and grinning at him like a giant weight had just been lifted off both of their shoulders, she exclaimed, "I know where to go!" And then she took off running.
Sure enough, Professor Duell was in the owlery. "First one here! Go me!" she cheered when she saw she was the first student to arrive. (To be fair, she'd had a head start on the divining thing.) She walked in and took Freddie's divined spot, even though there was no graded paper to be gotten. It was the principle of the thing.
Being a Pecari and having braved the deluge leaving her House common room earlier that afternoon, she was well aware of the rain going on outside (being a seventh year was awesome though, because she could dry herself really easily now and she hadn't looked even a little bit like a drowned rat when she talked to Philippe - even though she had dawdled and danced in the rain for a good twenty minutes before that while waiting for it to be time to go to Charms) and she guessed that might discourage birds from flying about so their flight patterns could determine the future, but she was still disappointed they weren't going outside. It wasn't like it was a cold rain this early in the year. That was understandably miserable.
She picked an owl that drew her attention more than the others. Right now he was just preening himself (or herself, Anya couldn't tell). She focused on a question: Will I get my Charms homework done on time?
The owl continued to preen himself, heedless of her assignment to see how he was going to fly. After a minute though, he took off and landed on another perch to Anya's right.
Confusion struck her, and she turned to her neighbor. "Is it my left to right, or the owl's left to right? If it's the owl's perspective, then he went to the left, and the Charms homework is going to be easy. If it's my left to right, I'm gonna need some help getting that essay done."
OOC: Freddie's author gave the okay on the parts involving Freddie.
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Anya Delachene
Who Who?
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