Professor Aaron McKindy
August 24, 2011 11:25 AM
Beginner's Lesson 007 [Years I - III] by Professor Aaron McKindy
Professor Aaron McKindy had, by this point in his life, learned that things just had a tendency to not go his way. He had more-or-less resigned himself to that sort of thing, but the return of his old friend to the post of Headmistress at Sonora shortly after he had been invited to submit an application for professorship at the Center for Higher Education of the Society of Sorcerers was a bit much. Admittedly, Aaron had been excited to hear that he had been accepted and was already anticipating his move to the small town outside of Los Angeles. After the messy divorce of last year and the stress he felt at being somewhat friendless at Sonora, it would be a nice change. He had also begun studying to become an Animagus, and teaching at a university would provide him with better resources to do that, and it had (of course) been a tremendous honour to be selected out of the Society of Sorcerers as someone who would be a valuable contribution to CHESS. But it wasn’t fair that Sadi had returned as Headmistress just as he was leaving.After Sadi had pointed out with her usual calm, matter-of-fact manner that she was only the acting Headmistress while the Scot was away on family business and that Aaron ought to stop sulking he had, of course. It was just that he didn’t want to.
He hadn’t yet let his students know that he would be leaving , but he had planned a number of particularly exciting lessons. If Aaron was going to leave the post he had spent most of his last decade at, he was going to do it in style. He would miss his students much more than he would miss his colleagues, but he did hold out hope that some of them would pursue higher education at CHESS and that he would see them again.
Today, for example, Aaron stood outside of the doorway into the Charms classroom to intercept his students before they entered. The Charms professor had spent a gratuitous amount of time playing with wizard space and planned to hold his Intermediate and Advanced classes in the library until he could put things to rights. Once all of the students seem to have gathered in the hallway, the t-shirt-clad man shoved his hands in the front pockets of his jeans and leaned against the doorway, feeling his wand handle stick into his lower back. Aaron had a penchant for sticking his wand in his back pocket, although it wasn’t a strictly safe procedure.
“Hello class!” the tall, black-haired man said, grey-green eyes looking around the group. They were still mostly segregated by year, although there was moderate mixing. “Before we begin class, I want you each to pair up – different years, please. I don’t want to see any first years with first years unless it’s strictly necessary.”
Once the students had followed his instructions, some less willingly than others, Aaron began handing out scraps of parchment, apparently blank. Those students who had been paying especial attention to the Midterm Challenge assignment that Aaron had given them to complete over break would probably suspect that the slips of parchment had actually been written on in Invisible Ink, but those who hadn’t would, presumably, be quite confused at the moment.
“Line up, please, by pairs,” Aaron directed, then waited as the students did so. “Each of you,” the Pecari Head of House announced, a grin creeping on to his face, “are now a pair of secret agents. You have been given a confidential government assignment that you must complete in the next hour and a half or suffer the consequences of failure,” there weren’t actually consequences of failure, but Aaron thought that such a ‘threat’ fit into the course of the assignment rather well. “Beginning in just a moment, each pair will be released through the door at forty-five second intervals.” He paused, then smiled broadly, opening the door.
“First pair, go!”
The obstacles for each team would be different – therefore the manipulation of wizard space – and if the team didn’t figure out that the instructions could be found on the slip of parchment they wouldn’t get far, but overall Aaron thought that this lesson offered a fun opportunity for imagination, exploration, and an assessment of the students’ comprehension and practical abilities.
Getting out his gradebook, Aaron slipped into his section of the wizard-spaced classroom to observe the students as they worked at their pop-quiz, of sorts.
|OOC|
Minimum ten sentences, please! But the more you do, the more House Points your House gets. Be creative and have fun! Tag me in your subject line if your character needs Aaron. Feel free to be creative with the charms you use – check the Harry Potter Lexicon or Wiki if you want some ideas – but don’t forget to remain within realistic guidelines. Each student pair will definitely be required to use: Wingardium Leviosa, Alohomora, Aparecium, and Lumos/Nox.
A bonus of up to ten points per character will be given for use of creativity in designing obstacles and your character’s response to them. However, as you write your posts, please recall that Aaron would not have created obstacles or situations in which the students would be put in actual, physical danger – although the illusion of actual, physical danger is totally legit for use.
Enjoy!
Subthreads: I spy by Linus Macaulay with Jessica Applerose - Teppenpaw, Linus
*Puts on sunglasses and a dark suit* Good to go, sir. by Russell Layne, Aladren Second Year with Katrina (Kitty) McLevy - Aladren
To the Batmobile! by David Wilkes, Aladren with Alice Adair, Crotalus
A positive outlook by Hope Brockert, Teppenpaw with Jhonice Trevear - Pecari
*gulp* by Valerie Lennox, Crotalus with Derry Four, Teppenpaw
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Professor Aaron McKindy
Beginner's Lesson 007 [Years I - III]
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Professor Aaron McKindy
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David Wilkes, Aladren
August 29, 2011 12:33 PM
To the Batmobile! by David Wilkes, Aladren
This sounds like a good idea seemed to David like good candidates for famous last words, but he wasn’t sure if they counted if he first didn’t say them out loud and then thought them sarcastically. He really hoped they didn’t count that way, because that was exactly how he came to interact with them once he heard they were going to be partnering up for the Charms lesson, which was either being held in the corridor or which involved something weird with the room, before they knew what was really going on with the Charms lesson.That they couldn’t pair up with people of their own years, though, struck him as indicative that his luck might not be in today. He didn’t really know the second and first years that well, which made it hard to know what he might be getting in a partner. If it was a hard lesson, that would – or at least really, really, could – be kinda bad. He wasn’t cut out for being a babysitter, and didn’t always pick up spells with great ease himself.
There was nothing to do about it, though, so he picked a face he was sure he had never seen in an Intermediate class before and smiled at it. “Hey,” he said, noticing that a line of pairs was already forming, and that the teacher had what looked like assignment slips in his hands, just waiting for the rest of them to form up so he could tell them what the assignment was going to be, “Got a partner yet?”
Maybe it would be fun. Stranger things had happened. Much stranger, if he didn’t miss his guess. He pushed his mind toward the lines where this would just be about having some fun in one of Professor McKindy’s often slightly eccentric lessons. That was the best way to think about it. The way to go about it, really. He had never believed it when teachers said it, because they were on pay from the government anyway and wanted students to be the opposite of what they were saying they wanted to help their test scores, but empirical evidence at Sonora suggested that perfectionism didn’t pay. It was better to just enjoy what he could and do his best at that and the rest alike, or else he thought he might go kinda crazy and that would be no good.
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David Wilkes, Aladren
To the Batmobile!
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David Wilkes, Aladren
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Alice Adair, Crotalus
September 02, 2011 12:16 PM
Can I be Cat Woman? by Alice Adair, Crotalus
When the students were intercepted at the door of the Charms room, Alice frowned. She didn’t like change. Change required an adaptation, a trait of Pecaris, and the last time, she had checked she was in Crotalus, a house that stated being cautious. Yes, she was cautious. She liked that which was known, but it seemed that this class was never that. Every single time it was something that bordered on the lines of being crazy if not being outright so. And the fact that they were not allowed to go immediately into the classroom was like a red light in her brain warning her that she was going to hate today’s lesson.Mmm, and it was only made worse by the fact that they were being ordered to work in pairs. She hated working in pairs because she usually ended up with someone that had difficulty with the lesson. But she was never quite sure that they actually had issues with the lesson or if they were merely mocking her, because she understood, or at least thought she did, the lessons. She supposed if her marks were any indication, then she guessed they weren’t somehow making fun of her. But she still was never sure. She never understood when others didn’t grasp something and assumed that they should. So, she felt that they were somehow pretending. When she had told Jordan this, her sister had called her crazy. Maybe she was.
Biting her lip, she shuffled a bit in her chucks, as she looked around for a partner. She decided to try and find a first year since she felt that there was little chance that they would pretend not to know anything. First years always seemed eager to show what they know or learn what they didn’t. But before she could, someone else asked her. She chewed the inside of her mouth, hesitating slightly. “No, I do not. We can be partners, if you like.” She added the last part, because that always left room for one to change their mind. “Alice Adair. You are David Wilkes, right?” She remembered names from role calls, easily enough.
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Alice Adair, Crotalus
Can I be Cat Woman?
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Alice Adair, Crotalus
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David
September 06, 2011 6:31 PM
Sure thing. by David
David couldn’t quite put a name to the face of the girl he’d spoken to, but to his surprise, she was immediately able to identify him. He wasn’t sure if he should feel pleased or paranoid, really, though he was more inclined toward the latter. Whatever he might like to tell himself from time to time, particularly when swearing at a spell that wasn’t going his way wasn’t an option because there were teachers around and he had to say something to keep his work going, he knew he wasn’t exactly a Sonora celebrity. He had yet to even play in a Quidditch game, never mind do something epic in one, and while he was a decent student, this did not exactly make him stand out in a room with three years of Aladrens in it the way it might have in a Muggle school.He settled for not thinking either way about it. Some people, he knew, were really good at faces; he wasn’t one of them, but some people were, and she didn’t seem to expect to have been recognized. That wasn’t in line with the members of his family he knew to be really good at remembering what everyone they met looked like, but then, his family wasn’t normal in any sense of the term, and he expected a truly normal person born into it would be converted or disowned by sixteen at best.
“Yeah, that’s me. Don’t think we’ve met, though.” Though now that he really thought about it, he was pretty sure she was one of the second years, one of the very few Crotali – that number stuck out, along with how many Aladrens there were, because it was completely the opposite in his year. “Good to, though. What do you think all this is about?”
The answer to his question was soon revealed. “Well, this is different,” he commented, as much to himself as Alice. A downside to being the Quidditch reserve was that he’d developed a habit of commenting on a lot of things to himself, a habit born of running his own commentaries of the matches he watched without anyone in close proximity to look at him like he’d bumped his head on something. “Are you good at this kind of thing? I don’t do this kind of thing, but I think it sounds neat.” Really neat, actually; he was hoping to have some fun with this. Being a secret agent. How many times, since he’d become a wizard, had he thought about how it might actually be possible to do some of the James Bond thing because of magic? A whole lot.
He took the bit of paper, apparently blank, and then grimaced and handed it to Alice. “Can you remember the makes-ink-appear spell?” he asked. “I can’t remember what it is right now to save my life.”
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David
Sure thing.
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David
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Alice
September 16, 2011 11:54 AM
Glad we have that established. by Alice
“No, meeting would have required an introduction and this would be our first introduction. Traditionally, as introductions go, there is only one introduction, however, some people are forgetful and therefore, require many introductions. So, in case you are forgetful, it is the only introduction we have ever had,” Alice replied in her strangely logical manner. Most people at this point might smile to indicate that they were joking, but Alice’s face remained quite expressionless with the exception to her dark hazel eyes, which seemed to stare through others. It could be eerie at times.Alice tilted her head at David’s question causing her long, light brown hair to fall to one side, some of it into her face. She brushed it behind one ear. “I have never done this kind of thing before, so I do not know if I am good or not. I suppose everyone will do just as well since it is merely a matter of using the spells at the appropriate intervals.” The idea that anyone would actually not know or be scared or any other possible factor that would tie up the production of the game did not occur to her. It was a folly of hers not to account for human nature when it always accounted for so much.
“Though, it does sound neat,” she admitted, as she pretended to study a piece of the floor that was a slightly different color than the rest. She hated to admit that she might actually enjoy class when she worked so hard to pretend that she didn’t. Enjoying classes, enjoying school, might imply that she wasn’t normal. Normal kids didn’t enjoy the academic aspects of school. Unless, of course, you were in Aladren, but she wasn’t in Aladren. No, she was in Crotalus, which seemed to imply a certain amount of socializing. Different than Pecari’s openness. It was more of a game of backstabbing and rumors. So, being in this House, she was unable to enjoy school lest she seemed weird and the rumors turn to her.
Sigh. David gave the paper to her, asking her if she remembered the formula. Yes, she remembered the formula, but this wasn’t normal. Alice considered pretending like she didn’t know it, but he was an Aladren. So, he probably actually did know the spell and just wanted to see if she did, if she was going to be a help or a hinder in doing this project. She pointed her wand at the paper, “Aparecium!” Slowly, but surely, the words slowly appeared. “Oh, they’re instructions.” It was a really good thing too since they were next up.
“Ready to go?” She stepped forward finding herself surrounded by total darkness. It was disorienting and her initial reaction was to turn back. She hated being in the dark. There was something upsetting about not being able to see what was around her. Perhaps, it was the fact that everything around her was unknown and she was a person that very much liked the known. Sighing, she bent down to try and find her wand. In her disorientation, she had dropped it. “David?” She wasn’t sure where he had gone.
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Alice
Glad we have that established.
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Alice
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David
September 26, 2011 11:23 AM
It'll form a solid foundation for our partnership. by David
“I…think I’m not that forgetful,” David said, not quite sure what to make of Alice’s analysis of his comment. Her thoughts on how the game should go only confirmed the notion, he thought, that she really should have been an Aladren.Or maybe not, when she made such an intent study of the floor. There were quiet Aladrens, but not, that he’d seen, very many very shy ones. Heck, half the House was too busy being ambitious to bother, and a lot of the rest of them (he thought with something like pride; he had been considered ‘the weird kid’ in Muggle school, and while he doubted his Housemates would call him a model Aladren any more than his old classmates had called him a normal human, he still did a lot better here than he had there) didn’t have the social skills for being shy to occur to them. He thought he was certainly getting blunter after three years in there.
He’d have to take care what he said to her, though. Be nice. Not do anything too dramatic. He could do that.
It would be good, too, if he could manage to do a few other things, which he was failing at so far. To David’s relief, thought, his partner seemed to have no trouble with the spell that made the words show up on their paper. “Good job,” he said encouragingly to her when the words began to appear on the paper. They weren’t quite readable yet, but he guessed it was just a matter of giving them a minute.
Guessed, because reading them immediately proved impossible. To his not-so-much relief, they then immediately found themselves in the pitch-black dark.
“Here,” David said when Alice called his name, hoping his voice sounded steady. He’d jumped, just a little, at hearing a voice out of it. It was not the kind of thing he intended to ever bandy about at Sonora, since was reasonably sure he would rather not be mocked by every other male over the age of five he had occasion to come into contact with, but he was a little uneasy in the dark.
Of course, he didn’t have to be in the dark, but the light on the end of his wand would probably just make shadows that were worse than being in the total dark. He had to use it, though, because otherwise, he and his partner would never find each other. So, with a flourish he hoped would translate into an appropriately heroic mindset once he was done, he took out his wand and said, “Lumos.”
He had a feeling the wand lighting his face from below made him look faintly demonic and better suited to a Halloween festival than a spy thriller, but maybe, once they added some more light, that effect would be dimmed. If they should add more light. “Do you think we have to worry about security?” he asked. “If we were really spies, two lights might attract the night guards or whatever.” Unless this was already supposed to be a death trap. He wondered how many spy thrillers McKindy watched or read in his spare time. Knowing the professor’s frame of reference would have made this a lot easier to navigate.
“I guess we need them, though, if just to read the directions and not fall over our feet,” he added immediately as yet another thought occurred to him. And, with it, a bit of excitement crept back in. It was just a game, after all, so figuring out what to do was part of the fun.
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David
It'll form a solid foundation for our partnership.
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David
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