Spell Development, Life, and Everything on Library

Anne Wright, Fair

July 31, 2010 8:44 PM

Spell Development, Life, and Everything by Anne Wright, Fair

It took a tremendous effort of will, but Anne forced herself to stop half-skipping as she stepped into the library. With an even greater effort of will, one that she had entertained serious doubts about whether she could pull off, she did not immediately proceed to the back and try to go to her common room.

Sonora had not been the best years of her life. That honor, arguably, went to those that had passed since she left. Sonora had, however, been home, and every familiar quirk of the flooring made her feel more relaxed. Her brain still refused to accept that Professor Powell was actually Headmistress and not just playing headmistress the way Anne herself had on the stage at Christmas last year, but she almost felt like she could have started attending her classes again and no one would have noticed. This was still home.

As she waved to Zack as he headed for his station, already planning to corner him once the fair proper began, she wondered what Chris and the family would say if she switched majors again and became a teacher.

Cannot afford it. Cannot afford it. Cannot afford it, she chanted to herself. If not for those summer sessions she had started taking while she was still at Sonora, she would be a full year behind just because of all the time she’d spent wandering around aimlessly through subjects that interested her. Unless she could wheedle Powell into offering magical theory classes – not likely, given her ever-lackluster skill in wheedling – or came into quite a lot of money and – given the demands made of Sonora teachers – became single, she was going to have to leave it alone and settle for donating money and hoping that got her invited back for random events.

She had given up Quidditch, and so wasn’t as muscular as she had been three years earlier, but still looked much the same as she had as a student: intent dark eyes, black hair, sharp features, a little tall. Now, though, her hair was straightened, she wore make-up, and though she had reverted to her old blue-and-black color scheme for the day, in the outside world, she wore other colors more often than not. Jewelry, too; she hadn’t given that up for the day, and thought anyone who remembered her might be a little thrown by the big silver earrings swinging between her jaw and hair and the chunky necklace above her Aladren-blue collar. She still felt like herself, though, just…calmer, and with a few different focuses instead of one that consumed her entire life by itself.

Of course, at the moment, those other passions seemed to be fading a little as she easily settled back into fourth year. She was going to have a hard time staying on topic today.

She was just considering sneaking something out of her old friend the Runes section to read while she was here when she noticed she was being observed by students in the familiar green robes and smiled at them. “Hey,” she said, trying to sound inviting and hoping that she didn’t, as she so often did, get it wrong again. Her ability to work with social cues had improved, but she was still far from stellar at it. “I’m Anne. Wright.” Gray, in his letters, had seemed to think that people were more likely to recognize ‘Anne Wright’ than just ‘Anne,’ though he hadn’t really explained why; he’d seemed a little mystified that she’d asked. The partial answer she’d gotten had something to do with Quidditch.

That was the topic she chatted with the first ones about in each session, trying to be subtle about grilling them for stats, until she was pretty sure she had what qualified as a small group gathered around. "Fun as this is, I guess you guys are here to hear me talk about spell development," she said, twisting a piece of her hair around her right index finger. She had never really been a presenter, and while she'd told people about her new path often enough, she wasn't used to there being anything really formal about it. "It's, uh, what I'm planning to do once I finish school."

Where to begin. "Basically, I started taking Latin classes over the summers when I was still a student here because my cousins used to make fun of me for not being able to speak French," she said, half-smiling at her own stupidity. "And for ages, I didn't really know what I wanted to do after I started at UCLA - great school, by the way; remind me to talk about that later - so I just kept taking Latin classes. Finally, I finished all the standard ones, so I took some spell Latin ones." She winced. "Believe me, there is a difference. And then one of my professors suggested that, since I'd covered so much Charms and Transfig and magical theory while I was floating, that I could probably do well in more advanced spell development courses, so that's what I did.

"The plan is to finish the basic program and get a job, and then use the proceeds from that to start taking some Greek courses to advance the, you know, career. Latin, Ancient Greek, and Icelandic are the three big modern magical languages, though I'm not sure I'm going to learn Icelandic. Depends on whether or not I ever learn to pronounce my own name in Greek. It's easy to learn vocabulary in a new language, but it's really hard to get it in your head, you know, so you can think it in and work with it really well, and that's what you have to do for this. I mean, I think there are some people working on English-speakers using English in magic, but that's not mainstream, and I'm not sure how much success they're having.

"But, yeah. It's really cool stuff even at the level I'm at, which is...not a high level. The pay's pretty good, too, but that's because there's a decent chance you're going to get hurt even if you're careful. It's also pretty dangerous stuff. You have to be kind of a Crotalus and a Pecari at the same time, sometimes, and then there's some fields of research that you aren't allowed to get into. Dark Arts stuff, mostly, but I'm told you get a more thorough introduction to the ethics of it once you get into the field proper. The governments are one of the biggest employers, but there's some independent firms, too. Depends on what sort of work you want to do."

She straightened up slightly. "College itself is pretty okay. I liked it better here. This place is awesome. I love it. This is, like, my favorite room in the entire world, this and the Quidditch Pitch. Er - sorry. Got off topic. College. There's a lot less oversight, so you can skip class whenever you want, but most people have to go it alone. I was lucky; my aunt and uncle live nearby, so I still live with them so I have someone to look out for me and make sure I'm doing stuff so I don't get kicked out, and I have friends and my boyfriend to help them out when I'm flipping out over academic-y stuff Grayson and Janine don't really get." And her therapist, but they didn't need to know about that. Her therapist didn't really need to know about them, either; she wasn't sure what Dr. Bennett would think of her coming back here, the focus of a lot of her obsessive tendencies, which was why Anne hadn't told her about the Fair.

"So - yeah. Anyone want to ask me anything? Spells, college, the alleged wisdom of alleged adulthood..." she spread her hands. "Fire away. I can't promise I'll be totally honest if you get personal, but ask whatever."

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