Professor Rowan Dakin

November 19, 2009 4:37 PM
To say that Rowan Dakin was nervous was an understatement, she was down right fearful. How could she be nervous of students who were so young, after all she had faced in her past? After ten years of being a Dragon Keeper she needed a change in pace but why was she so fearful of the students? They were just children; they didn’t blow fire at her, nor try to claw her eyes out.


The short Professor made her way to the large fire pit where the fire was still going strong, perfect for her little friends that crawled all over the logs. She bit her lip nervously as she swept her short dark hair out of her face as the students began to gather. They seemed to be a calm bunch but one could never tell at the start of a class, that she remembered from her time in school. They were calm till they had tested the Professors patience.


Finally they were all settle and she smiled at them. “Welcome to Care of Magical Creatures, I am Professor Rowan Dakin.” She paused as she stepped out of their line of sight so they could see the blaze that held the Salamanders. “The first things we will be studying are salamanders. Come sit down on the logs I have arranged for you around the fire.”


She watched as the students took seats and she walked over to the fire. “You may want to take notes.” She said with a nod of her head and waited for the students to take out their writing equipment. “In here are salamanders, a fire dwelling lizard.” She smiled and rocked on her heels looking at the bright blue and red salamanders. “They are born out of flames, and live as long as the flames that they are born of are still going.”


She paused as she put a pair of gloves on and reached into the flames. She grabbed one of the salamanders and held it out by his tail for the class to see. “These guys feed on the flames or when out of the fire, on pepper.” Rowan set it down on a table a bit further away. She laid out some pepper and salamander munched on it. “They can last out of the fire for six hours as long as you regularly feed them pepper. Salamanders are known for their regenerative properties, and are used in many potions but these guys are for you to enjoy.”


Rowan waved her wand and tables appeared all around the fire. “Please pair up and come get one salamander. Please do not reach in the fir, allow me to get them for you. Once you get them you can feed them pepper and study them.” With that she clapped her hands and began to hand off the Salamanders to the partners.


OOC: Normal posting length, the more creative you are with your salamanders the more points you earn! Also there is a quick homework lesson if you do it I’ll add 5- 10 more points!
Subthreads:
0 Professor Rowan Dakin Beginner Lesson (1-3 years) 0 Professor Rowan Dakin 1 5

Marissa Stephenson

November 26, 2009 12:03 AM
Though more than a little worried about the possibility of burns, Marissa took a seat near the professor and her fire and smiled politely at the woman before she took out her clean notebook and class text. No matter what the professor did, Marissa had to stay in her good graces. There was no magic used here, which meant Marissa could succeed without half-killing herself the way she did in Defense, or at least be reasonably safe from the regular humiliations of Charms or Transfiguration. That was the thing to remember.

She wanted to ask how often constituted 'regularly' - she'd never been a fan of imprecision with this sort of thing; as far as she knew, feeding the salamander too much pepper was just as bad as feeding it too little - but couldn't get the measure of the professor well enough to feel sure if asking that would get her labeled a smart aleck or not. That would, well, be bad. Very bad. Not quite as bad as making an enemy of Professor McKindy or Professor Carter, but still...bad. The one problem with being someone whose grades hinged on a talent for essay writing was that all such grades were very subjective.

It quickly became apparent that, at least for today, things weren't going to change much from the way they'd been while she was in first year. Lecture followed by group work. That format was incredibly common at Sonora, really; she thought it was an attempt to stay on top of teaching strategy, only they'd forgotten the part about varying which instructional techniques they used.

Still, she had no objections. This class was perhaps the best single way of getting to know people at Sonora, and since the second year of Crotalus was made up of her and Jethro, mixing with other Houses and years was pretty much the only way she could have a social life for most of the year, and that was important to her.

Being proactive wasn't really something Marissa enjoyed - she wasn't a natural leader, which was one reason it was important that she have a social life - but Mama insisted it was the only way to make her way in the world. Since the theory seemed to work well for Mama and Daddy both, she had to at least try. "Hey," she said to a nearby fellow apparent loner. "Want to work together?"
16 Marissa Stephenson I'm not a fan of fires. 147 Marissa Stephenson 0 5


Starbuck Gregory

November 27, 2009 8:08 PM
Starbuck wasn’t that excited about Care of magical Creatures she wasn’t a big fan of animals. She only enjoyed having her dog Porky around. She was glad that it was outside though and not in a stuffy classroom like the other classes had been in. She liked how Professor Dakin had them sit on logs. Having lived on a small farm most of her life bonfires and logs went hand in hand. It was the one thing she missed about being home, the fact that she got to be outside most of the time.

Starbuck sighed when Professor Dakin announced what they would be working with. Creepy crawly salamanders. She bit her lip and hung back as the students rushed forward to grab partners and salamanders. She didn’t realize someone was near her until she heard “Hey, Want to work together?”

She smiled at the other girl and nodded. “Sure, I’m Starbuck Gregory.” She said with a smile. “Would you like to get the Salamanders and I’ll get the pepper?” She asked hoping that the girl would go along with it. She really didn’t want to touch the icky Salamander.
0 Starbuck Gregory I'm not a fan of salamanders 0 Starbuck Gregory 0 5

Marissa

November 28, 2009 8:04 PM
Marissa couldn’t honestly say she was thrilled at the prospect of handling a salamander. She wasn’t exactly squeamish, but…Well, it was more like she was squeamish, but cared much more about doing well in one of the only areas she could than she did about how much touching a lizard was likely to make her skin crawl. It would only be for a minute, though – if it wandered off during observation, she could poke it back to center with her wand – and it wouldn’t hurt anything.

“Sure,” she said. “I’m Marissa Stephenson.”

Just saying her name, in the face of the poor first year’s, made her feel slightly guilty. She’d gotten a handful of jokes about not moving to Greece over the years, and her parents had really not thought out the unfortunate implications of her initials all the way until after she started school, but at least her names were all normal. Daddy had not seen fit to name her after a brand of overpriced coffee drinks, and Mama wouldn’t have allowed it if he had. She wondered if the other girl was the child of a celebrity or something.

Salamander gingerly collected, Marissa joined back up with…Miss Gregory (somehow, she just could not bring herself to think out the other girl’s first name without a picture of the coffee house springing to mind). “How long do you think ‘regularly’ is?” she asked. She’d look it up in the book, of course, but it seemed polite to ask her partner’s opinion.
16 Marissa Guess we'll just have to deal with it. 147 Marissa 0 5


Starbuck

November 29, 2009 2:01 AM

Starbuck smiled as the other girl introduced herself as Marissa, that was a pretty name. Though not a name for a girl like Starbuck, she was a tomboy and it had helped her fit in with her older brothers. Only one of Gregory children had, had a normal name, Marc, and that was only because he was a junior. The rest had been named after characters in Moby Dick, Ishmael, Elijah, Ahab, and Starbuck herself.

Starbuck shrugged when the Marissa asked, “How long do you think ‘regularly’ is?” . “Probably about every five minutes.” She said it like she knew, a habit she had picked up from her brothers, always act as if you knew what you were talking about. She ran a hand through her hair and smiled. “So what house are you?” Starbuck had quickly learned this was a normal question here at school.

When she had written to her brothers Ahab had been the one to answer. He had teased her endlessly about going to school before she left but the letter had practically glowed green with envy. Starbuck was the lucky one she had left the somber house. Mother and Father were as they always were shells of their former selves.
0 Starbuck I guess so 0 Starbuck 0 5

Marissa

December 03, 2009 5:50 PM
Five minutes. Her partner sounded fairly certain about that, though the use of the eternal 'probably' did not escape Marissa's attention. She had a thing for details, especially spoken ones; Addison said it was because she'd read too many books where slippery phrasing and oddly placed perfume bottles were essential to figuring out the plot, and Marissa had no reason to dispute that. The midnight detective drama binges she went on sometimes with Paige were also highly suspect. She did a little mental division of the class period and nodded.

"That doesn't sound bad, considering how long we're going to be here," she said. "It's better safe than sorry, right? And if it doesn't want more, I guess it'll just stop eating and we'll know."

Marissa was not so good at sounding decisive. She knew its theoretical value as a strategy, but...Yeah. Nature had conspired to give her a soft, high-pitched voice and a personality to match, and the combination did not a lot of assertiveness make. Besides, assertive people were usually at least somewhat antagonistic toward others, and Marissa liked being liked.

"I'm in Crotalus," she said when she was asked about her House. She smiled as she did, but wondered, in the back of her mind, if the House reputation was already known of. She had little evidence for it, but it seemed that a lot of people did not think all that well of Crotalus girls. Some of her older Housemates were said to be...unpleasant, especially to people like her. Her very first day of classes in first year had featured a warning from a classmate about the purebloods therein. "Second year. You?"
16 Marissa Can you think of any alternatives? 147 Marissa 0 5


Starbuck

December 07, 2009 1:59 AM
Starbuck grinned when Marissa said it sounded right she glad it hadn’t sounded stupid she would have hated to sound stupid. “I’m a first year, Percari.” She said after Marissa said she was a second year Crotalus girl. She set the salamander on the table and let it eat out of the palm of her hand suddenly unafraid of it.

“So are all classes partner work? Charms and this class we’ve had to partner up. Do you enjoy the classes? What’s your favorite one? ” She asked the older girl glad she could ask these questions. She hadn’t really spoken to any other older students and she wondered a lot about Sonora sure eventually all this would be second nature to her but right now she was just a curious muggleborn.

She paused and blushed looking at the older girl. “Sorry about asking all these questions, I’m just getting used to the idea of all of this. It still seems a bit unreal to me.” She said with a frown. Starbuck hated not knowing stuff she strived to be the smartest among her brothers but here in this place of magic and wonderment she was just a lost little girl.
0 Starbuck No I can't, sadly 0 Starbuck 0 5

Marissa

December 09, 2009 7:10 PM
Marissa watched in amusement as Starbuck let the salamander eat out of her hand and fired off questions faster than she could answer them. It was a bit odd, not being a first year Muggleborn half-terrified and half-intrigued by everything, but she definitely had no objections to it.

Except that, in some classes, it would be her last year as a Beginner, and Intermediate sounded hard. There was that. She could hold her own, with effort, with the Beginners; a foray into more difficult work next year was likely to be, at best, painful.

She wasn't going to think about that now, though. It was an exercise in futility; next year would come in spite of what she had to say on the matter, and she had this year to deal with first. "Oh, don't worry about it," she said, only just preventing herself from adding a 'honey'. She had spent too much time being charming to Daddy's friends this summer; it was distinctly bad for her diction. "I'm Muggleborn. I spent half of my very first Potions lesson asking my partner questions."

She wasn't sure, even now, how smart of her it was to admit that, but hang it, she couldn't help what she was. "Most of the classes are pretty hard for me, but it really means something when I finally get it right. History of Magic is my favorite, though. And we usually do partner up a lot in most classes." Most of that had been said in what Marissa called her 'definition voice', so named because it was usually used for reciting definitions in class. It was subtly different from a presentation voice, which had more depth of expression. "It's great for getting to know people," she added, more normally. "Like now, actually. I would hardly know anyone if not for classes, because I have to spend most of my free time studying and I don't have any roommates."
16 Marissa I guess we'll just carry on, then. 147 Marissa 0 5