Arts and crafts time! on Charms

Professor Lorraine Taylor

July 07, 2009 11:13 AM

Advanced Charms I by Professor Lorraine Taylor

The Charms classroom was bare except for three long, black laboratory tables in the centre. The room was still carpeted—a signal that the Advanced Charms students would not be using fire that day—but there were no seats to be found. It was Lorraine Taylor’s very firm belief that her students should not be performing labs while seated. Such a thing would be a detriment to their learning. Or at least, that’s what the middle-aged Charms professor assured herself as she propped her hands on her hips, looked around the classroom, then opened the door from half a room a way with a decisive flick of her wand.

Sooner rather than later (the students had finally learned after dealing with her as a teacher for several years), the sixth and seventh years entered her classroom. Since they had elected to take this class post-testing, Lorraine worked under the occasionally incorrect assumption that they all wanted to be there, and acted accordingly. Some years that meant a test of their abilities in unexpected or unprecedented ways. The woman pushed a strand of grey-blonde hair out of her face, watching the students filter in to their lab table of choice. They had become accustomed to such things by now. Lorraine was by no means an easy teacher, but she could confidently say that she prepared the students well not only for their end-of-seventh-year tests, but also for future life.

Today, a myriad of materials were piled on the lab tables. Boxes of spaghetti, bags of marshmallows, containers of Magical Strength Glue, rolls of aluminum foil. For any truly creative student, there were more materials in Lorraine’s cabinet that they would be free to use.

Once all the students had arrived, Lorraine began the class by beginning speaking. It was late November and somewhat chilly in the room; mentally, she reminded herself to fetch her new cloak after this lesson. Alternatively she could heat her room...but that would just be wasteful.

“Good afternoon, class,” the woman greeted them with a slight smile. “Today, you will make a bridge. You may use anything on the lab tables or in my cabinet. It must support at least the weight of that cauldron,” Lorraine gestured to a corner of the room, where a cauldron sat, filled almost to the brim with a particularly unpleasant looking, green, gloppy substance. “And trust me, you don’t want to spill that.” On that note, the professor decided that she should fetch that cloak, and promptly exited the room. She would be back shortly, of course, but the woman did not expect her students to ask many questions of her. They knew better by now; she was, after all, more wont to encourage them to collaborate rather than actually answering most questions.

Subthreads:

Getting creative. by Geoffrey Layne with Elly Eriksson

Arts and crafts time! by Alexandra St. Martin with Amber Carey

This is a witty title. Really. by Lila St. Martin with Saul Pierce

0 Professor Lorraine Taylor Advanced Charms I 0 Professor Lorraine Taylor 1 5

Geoffrey Layne

July 09, 2009 3:00 PM

Getting creative. by Geoffrey Layne

There were some days when Geoff loved the challenge of Taylor-style Charms, but a lot more when he loathed it. If he'd had a jot less pride, he would have already walked out, but he had made a commitment to finishing this course and he intended to keep it. It wasn't, after all, as if he couldn't do the work; he simply failed to enjoy doing said work. That theory that people could only excel at subjects they had an interest in and derived pleasure from studying had clearly been the brainchild of a failure.

A glance at the room setup let Geoff know today was going to be one of those days where he proved that theory wrong again. It looked like someone had gone nuts in the middle of a kitchen raid, and only having three tables meant the assignment was probably going to involve large groups.

The very idea irritated him. It was late enough in November for him to practically be able to see midterm, and in seven years, he had never gotten past getting increasingly crabby right before the holidays. During such times, classes ended their first shifts as opportunities to broaden his mind and became things between him and getting to sleep in. It was a little worse than usual this year since, for the first time in years, he was actually looking forward to going home for Christmas. Now that, by all reports, his mother was better, this was promising to be the first normal holiday since his third year.

He took a place at the central table, and contemplated just sitting on the edge of it for a moment before dismissing it as being far too Anne. Of the two of them, he'd always been the one who was more in tune with the spirit of the law and not just the letter of it, and this tendency had grown with her absence. Since the mess on the tables implied that they would not be taking notes today, Geoff took out his wand to charm whatever it was they were supposed to be charming but left everything else in his bag.

When he heard the actual assignment, he wasn't sure whether or not to laugh. Of all the things on the table, he saw two that had any potential use. Unless the marshmallows were to provide sugar to keep their brains moving, anyway. With the sizes of the groups factored in, this had more potential to end in disaster than anything Geoff had seen since Crotalus put on its Concert act.

Since it was only really funny if his grade wasn't the one going up in smoke, however, Geoff decided the best defense was a strong offense and spoke up first once Taylor left - both figuratively and literally - them to their plans. "If we want this thing to be strong, it should probably be low to the table," he said. "The taller it is, the more likely it is to crack." He picked up a roll of aluminum foil. "We can take off the foil, chop the rolls into pieces, and use the pieces for supports after we Strengthening Charm them. Can someone hit the cabinets and see if we can find a flat something for the top? We can always fold up the foil and charm it if we have to, but it's probably safer to get the strongest piece of material we can straight off."

No one had ever accused him of being a great one for group work. Things just worked better with one person in charge. Working quickly and quietly was also of the essence, so no other group would steal their ideas and beat them to it. A few of the pointers his sister had force-drilled into him, however, had stuck, so he quickly tacked on a "Unless one of you has a better idea?"

16 Geoffrey Layne Getting creative. 72 Geoffrey Layne 0 5

Alexandra St. Martin

July 09, 2009 6:58 PM

Arts and crafts time! by Alexandra St. Martin

Charms wasn't Allie's best subject, but she was holding an acceptable grade and expected to pass her RATS in it. That was as much as she felt prepared to demand from a subject. A heated classroom to study it in would've been nice, too, but she had her new gloves and could live with wearing her cloak for an hour. It wasn't that much of a discomfort.

She took a spot at the lab table by the door and smiled at and greeted the other students who joined it, figuring the lot of them would probably have to work together and being uncomfortable with standing around in silence anyway. That was occasionally practical, but always (as far as she knew of, anyway) impolite.

She returned the teacher's slight smile, and winced at the looks of the substance they were assured they did not want to spill. Be it because the potion would stain their robes or because it would eat holes in their shoes and feet, she didn't know, but she believed the assertion that they were better off while it was safely in its cauldron. This was a project she was going to have to focus on to make work.

When Professor Taylor left the room, Allie took that as the signal to begin work. Not wanting to waste time in case the first try or so at an acceptable support structure were not up to standard, she looked around at her group.

"Are any of you especially good at planning out this sort of thing?" she asked. "I'm - " she blushed slightly - "not, really, and I don't think we want to spill that potion."

16 Alexandra St. Martin Arts and crafts time! 76 Alexandra St. Martin 0 5

Elly Eriksson

July 11, 2009 5:34 PM

Get those creative juices flowing by Elly Eriksson

Advanced level charmms wasn't really all that Elly had expected it to be. Truthfully, she had never really enjoyed charms classes. Defense lessons had been fantastic, but when it came down to it, Elly was just better at charms. Of course, she was good at a specific sort of charms: broadly, not those listed on the school curriculum. If she needed vegetables to sing, clothes to flash different colours, or a book to produce weather, she was sorted. Actual, useful, classroom-friendly spells were not so successful. Nor so fun. Though being abysmal at history and transfiguration, she'd had to take at least one more subject, and charms had the higher grade. Hence, here she still was, even though Professor Taylor was dull as old silver.

Of course, there were occasional exceptions to the rule. When she entered the room to find no seating and a random assortment of materials laid out, Elly was hopeful that this was one of those beautiful situations. Taylor made short work of her lecture. Basically, 'make a bridge; go.'

Briefly glancing over the materials, Elly mused that the marshmallows couldn't be especially useful... though maybe they could be melted down and used as adhesive, then reset to hold other materials in place. Though before she'd really considered the rest of the assortment, she found herself laughing at Geoff Layne. She hadn't meant to; it was just that he was so serious about what essentially was a fun assignment, and a professor-given excuse for a laugh.

Although, now she'd laughed, she was worried she might offend him. It was probably best to offer something constructive (pun intended). Elly had lived most of her life in London; she knew a thing or two about bridges. "I think suspension bridges tend to be strongest," she volunteered - maybe the spaghetti could be the supporting cables? Though she did have a better idea. "This is a charms class, right? Why don't we just stick all the marshmallows together and Duro them six ways to Sunday?" If size was the issue, there were charms to sort that, too.

0 Elly Eriksson Get those creative juices flowing 92 Elly Eriksson 0 5

Lila St. Martin

July 23, 2009 2:50 PM

This is a witty title. Really. by Lila St. Martin

It took Lila less than fifteen seconds to realize that, no matter what it entailed, she was not going to like today's lesson.

There were only three tables. Three tables for the largest Advanced class there was, and no more. Literally no more - Taylor had dispensed with chairs. Her choices were between standing with her sister and risking people mixing them up in the chaos of a large-group project, standing with Geoff Layne and have to acknowledge his presence, or standing in a group of people she mostly didn't recognize.

She picked the third group. At least she might be able to boss them around. Allie didn't take orders from her, now, and she wouldn't put it past Geoff to pull rank on her.

To distract herself from the cold and the questions about what sort of hell Taylor was going to put them through in the lesson, Lila began organizing the rubbish spread over the table into categories and neat lines. With her entire mind fixed on that, she almost missed Taylor's greetings, which made her start slightly when she realized the woman was speaking.

Frankly, she was sure there was some kind of catch. It just felt too straightforward to her. Since she intended to have every single other person in her group in front of her when it came time to test their structure, though, Lila couldn't bring herself to care much. Straightening her shoulders up, she conjured up her bright smile.

"Okay," she said, just as brightly. "I think this is like heels. Things that are high and thin break before shorter and thicker ones. Since there's no way to make this thing look good, I say we mash all of this - " she waved a hand at the neatly-laid-out objects on their table - "together with charms and keep it short and broad." She hadn't said it had to be a high bridge. Barely being above the tabletop was still being above the tabletop.

16 Lila St. Martin This is a witty title. Really. 80 Lila St. Martin 0 5

Amber Carey

July 23, 2009 2:52 PM

I'll bring the Crayolas by Amber Carey

Amber didn't generally condone violence, but anyone who put it out that Charms was a soft option for RATS just deserved to be taken out back and shot. That was her opinion on that matter, and she wasn't changing it.

Advanced Charms was hard. Really, truly, honestly hard. She was holding an A in it, and while her father wouldn't be at all pleased (he was so lying when he said he was not an overachiever), she was grateful. After the first week or so, it was better than she'd expected to be doing this near the end of the term. She'd been expecting a Troll.

The lesson reminded her of a project she had done in fifth grade. They had been given a sheet of posterboard and five people to figure out how to make a structure strong enough to hold up more encyclopedias than that of any other group in the room. Amber's group had been taken over by Savannah Forbes, who - for a geek and the most bullied kid in their class - could really do the arrogant and commanding thing. She'd bored them all talking about some Greek temple, then cut the board up the way she wanted it and set the rest of them to making columns out of the smaller pieces. The idea had sounded insane, but it had worked; their group had won the candy corn prize when it had held up ten encyclopedias to the next-best group's seven.

This time, though, the groups had charms to work with in place of ancient, half-spent glue sticks with no caps on them.

Amber looked over at Allie St. Martin when she spoke up at the beginning of their work time. She didn't know the girl well, but she seemed nice and approachable, at least for a pureblood and Lila St. Martin's twin. That girl acted like the psycho zombie cheerleader in some screwed-up Halloween movie with no budget. "We can use the spaghetti to make up the length and breadth of it," she said, laying out pieces to show what she meant, "and use marshmallows for supports under it, once everything's been reinforced."

0 Amber Carey I'll bring the Crayolas 84 Amber Carey 0 5

Saul Pierce

August 08, 2009 11:51 PM

And this is a clever response by Saul Pierce

Saul was, as usual, one of the last to arrive in the Charms class. He was on time only because Elly was also in the class and he'd seen her leaving. By the time he reached the classroom, after a few distractions along the way, he didn't pay a lot of attention to who was nearby when moving to join one of the tables. If he had, he would have chosen differently.

Instead, his eyes were on the materials sitting on the long table. He watched Lila's hand rearranging them and he only barely remembered to pay enough attention to what Professor was saying to catch the gist of the assignment. As much as he liked Charms - and he loved Charms as a form of magic if not as a class - listening to any teacher had never been something he was particularly talented at. When Professor Taylor headed out of the room, he felt pretty proud of himself that he knew they were building bridges.

Lila's analogy about heels was completely beyond him. "Um, okay." He assumed she'd said something that might be right, but he couldn't quite pick out what that might have been amid the foreign talk of women's shoes.

But he did know a little bit about building stages, sometimes even with charmed assistance, and figured that might help them. "But we should probably build a frame first." The 'mash it all together' bit of her plan didn't really seem like the best approach to him. "We kinda need beams," he took a handful of marshmellows and starting lining them up in rows.

He continued, "And Xes in between them. There's always Xes in frames." He had no idea why, but he thought they looked cool, so figured it couldn't hurt to add them to their own. He poked a spagetti into the top bit of a mashmellow and the bottom bit of a neighboring marshmellow and did the same with a second piece of spaghetti so the two marshmellows were joined together by a crossed pair of spaghetties.

"Like that. And once we get the whole frame Xed in, then we can board in the stage surface - er - the bridge surface that the cauldron will sit on. That's always the last part. Oh, and we'll put in a lot of strengthening charms and stuff so things don't snap. We should probably have one on all of the spaghetties and do something for the mashmellows so they don't squish. Does anyone know a no-squishing charm?"

1 Saul Pierce And this is a clever response 82 Saul Pierce 0 5