Professor Light
November 19, 2011 12:00 AM
Sticks and Stones {3-5} by Professor Light
“... okay, seriously, where is my wand?” Tipping precariously over the cliff of Frantic, Caesar dropped to his knees, palms pressed against the floor, his fingers curling, bending to peer anxiously beneath his desk. “Come on... don’t do this to me!” Anora’s letter, like all of Anora’s letters, had come at a bad time for him. ‘Yes, fantastic. You had another baby. Yes, fantastic. Your husband is amazing. Yes, fantastic. Your life has turned out exactly the way you wanted it to.’ He had spent all night last night outlining a lesson that centered on how to make letters implode once the desired recipient held the envelope in their hand. After a few drinks his temper was calmed and his sanity had been restored, but while he wasn’t quite drunk, he was tipsy enough that he had struggled to remember exactly how the Sobering Charm was pronounced. Too afraid of oversleeping (again) he had made his way to his classroom late last night, and spent the entire morning planning an appropriate lesson, grateful that he hadn’t had a first period class.Checking the clock, Caesar gave up on searching for his wand and decided to use the remaining twenty minutes of agonized freedom re-outlining his lesson so that he wouldn’t have to demonstrate the appropriate wandwork. Rising to his feet, Caesar straightened only to slump back into his chair. “Oy!” Springing up a second later, Caesar turned to stare at the seat that had burned him. “For merlinssake...” He was wearing his robes backwards, and had sat on the pocket holding his wand. Caesar paused, straightening fully, his back stiff, his shoulders tensed and raised. Taking a deep breath through his nostrils, he filled his thoughts with anger. ‘HateAnorahateAnorahateAnorahatehatehateAnora!’ He let out the breath through his mouth, his lips parting just slightly, and all the hate, anxiety, and nervousness were drained. ‘Got nothin’ but love.’ “Alrighty then,” Turning his silver robes around, Caesar pulled out his wand (undamaged) and began cleaning up the traces of fatigue on his face, the wrinkles on his robes, and neatened his desk. “Okay, okay, okay...”
Muttering senseless, semi-positive words, Caesar got ready for his Intermediate students. He’d had them for a week, but wasn’t really sure what he thought of them yet. He’d gone to a slightly bigger school when he was a kid, so he was used to classes that were divided between each and every year. At Sonora he had to evaluate the difference in education that the third, fourth, and fifth years had. After going over the spells they’d each already learned, looking for overlapping gaps, overlapping connections, Caesar
“Hey, afternoon!” Caesar welcomed the incoming students as the clock finally caught up to where his mind had been for the past ten minutes. “Drop your essays on my desk before you take a seat, por favor.” Having been a victim of a love potion once - ‘HateAnorahateAnorahatehatehateAnora!’ - Caesar was wary of any and all potions and charms that manipulated the emotions of another human being in any way. He’d had the Intermediate class study Cheering Charms, taught them the incantation Laetissimus because he didn’t believe in withholding information out of fear, and then gave them an excerpt of his dissertation to read where he outlined how simple magic commonly perceived as harmless could potentially lead to the three Unforgivable Curses. For example, Cheering Charms leading to the Imperius Curse. Using his own dissertation as a resource, as well as three other text resources where one supported and the other two contradicted his opinion, he asked them all to write an essay on where they thought the line should be drawn in teaching magic, if any.
Waiting for everyone to settle down in their seats, Caesar glanced over at one of the full length mirrors he had propped up against the wall, pleased to see that the previous blood shot pupils, circles under his hazel almond shaped eyes, and the lifeless character of his honeyed brown hair was all gone, his midnight spells and energizing potion proving successful. “As you know, these two terms we’ll be focusing on the practical applications of charm work in the most frequently occurring scenarios. For example,” There was an indiscernible twitch of his wand, and on several desks life sized mannequins of various appearance fell with hard thumps and convincing shrieks of pain emitting from their unmoving mouths. “Having to heal yourself, or another.” Each mannequin was damaged in some way; a few had broken noses, split lips, legs twisted at odd angles, fingers spread out further than what was normal, hanging limply from their tiny sockets, what looked like blood running from infected ears, and gashes across a thigh and a chest.
“The first spell I want you all to practice is Tergeo.” Caesar pronounced it, Tur - jee - oh. He repeated the spell, this time moving his wand in a half crescent shape, watching the blood on a mannequin clear away. “Point it wherever you see blood. You have to clean the wound before you can properly treat it.” He kept his wand pointed steady at the same mannequin, fixing on the nose that the blood had gushed from. “Episkey is the second spell I want you all to practice.” He repeated the spell Eh - pis - kee without wand movement, just holding his wand-arm steady. With an audible snap! the mannequin's nose fell back into place. Caesar waited for any questions to pop up while waving his wand and letting the mannequin be restored to its previous horrific grandeur, sprawled over a student’s desk.
“I couldn’t spring for dummies for each and every one of you, but I’m glad because when applying these skills in the real world, it will be important to know how to work as a team, in a team, and to split the necessary duties. Start when you’re ready. I will be walking around the class, correcting your form.” He walked through the classroom as his students partnered up, fingers running through the thick volume of hair he had, falling to pull idly at his earlobe. 'I'm a teacher... huh. Who saw this coming?'
Subthreads: May break my bones. by Marcus Williams (Pecari) with Sophie Jamison [Pecari]
Aren't nearly as useful as wands. by Fae Sinclair (Crotalus) with Madeline Parry, Teppenpaw, Fae
Falling dummies could definitely hurt me. by David Wilkes, Aladren with Regina Parker (Teppenaw)
...Are trees and boulders if they did all that. by Sam Bauer, Crotalus with Jordan Adair, Crotalus
Can be less cruel than words. Trust me. by Ryan O'Malley, Crotalus with Phoenix Lucore, Crotalus
Weakness and strength. by Autumn Collins, Crotalus with Eliza Bennett, Crotalus, Eliza
...Had better come nowhere near me by Arthur Carey, Aladren with Alice Adair, Crotalus, Arthur
Hey, this is great! by Arnold Carey, Aladren with Sara Raines, Pecari
Blood and Bones. by Russell Layne, Aladren with Hope Brockert, Teppenpaw
Life's going to have some rough patches. by Kate Bauer, Teppenpaw with James Owen, James
Don't you love finding posts you really wrote weeks ago? by Jane Carey, Teppenpaw
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Professor Light
Sticks and Stones {3-5}
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Professor Light
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Autumn Collins, Crotalus
December 02, 2011 5:16 PM
Weakness and strength. by Autumn Collins, Crotalus
Her stomach rumbled and Autumn tried to ignore it. She had skipped lunch in favor of studying for CATS which were drawing ever nearer. Getting perfect scores was extremely important to her and she needed to lose weight, so it was really a no brainer for the Crotalus. Besides, while she wasn't as strong emotionally as her sister Lily, had never been a strong person in general, Autumn needed to be so now. Needed to be in control and stay on her diet. She was not going to give in to her weakness and hunger.Instead, she willed herself to listen to the new professor. She had never been fond of new professors. They caused Autumn nothing but anxiety. Especially if they were unpredictable people themselves. Worse, it meant Autumn had to try and impress someone new and the Crotalus felt blimp-ish and inferior and completely unimpressive right now. How on Earth was she going to make him like her? The fifth year was certain that Professor Light would either look right through her or wouldn't be able to miss what a fat dumpy little mouse she was.
Autumn felt another pang of hunger and ignored it, trying to concentrate on what the professor was saying. After all, she wanted perfect scores in all her classes as well and that couldn't happen if she didn't pay attention in class. Nor would she impress him. Autumn could even get in trouble for not listening and that would be just humiliating. She had to be strong and push the hunger out of her mind. She would have a salad for dinner later and exercise afterwards but for right now, Autumn had to focus on the lesson.
The assignment given made her feel kind of nervous. The Crotalus would never want to be a healer. Blood and guts didn't make her nauseous but they weren't her favorite thing. The real problem with Healing though, was that people could be in life and death situations and Autumn could not handle that sort of pressure. If someone died at her hands, she'd absolutely not get over it ever. Killing or even hurting someone could cause tremendous guilt even for someone not as pathetic as Autumn. Lily still felt bad about Kaylie's accident, after all.
She forced a smile, even though she didn't feel the least bit happy and turned to person next to her. "Will you please work on this with me?" Autumn would understand if they didn't want to. She was imperfect, a disgusting blob. Still, it would hurt her feelings anyway if the person refused.
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Autumn Collins, Crotalus
Weakness and strength.
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Autumn Collins, Crotalus
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Eliza Bennett, Crotalus
December 03, 2011 3:39 AM
Twelve of one, half a dozen of the other by Eliza Bennett, Crotalus
As she entered the classroom, Eliza glanced at Professor Light, smiled automatically at his greeting, replied cheerfully, playfully actually dropped her paper onto the desk before laughing and tidying the stack, and went to find a seat. After a week, she still didn’t know what to think of him, exactly, though she was still going through the motions of trying to sort it out. He was likely to prove as impotent and unimportant outside of the extremely narrow confines of this classroom as most of the staff was, but she did need to know. She had to know how predisposed he was to being her enemy, if the issue came up, and work out how to deal with that, then.She had never, in three full years, decided how to evaluate teachers’ lessons in terms of that, but when a grotesque doll fell from the ceiling to end up in front of her, she counted it as a piece of evidence that a professor’s lessons did indicate how much for or how against good taste he was. She rubbed her hands against her skirt as though to clean them as she looked at the thing, her mouth twisting slightly with displeasure at the sight before her eyes. Eliza was the eldest of five children, so she knew something of what illness and injury and all that looked like, it had been sort of inevitable with all of them running around the house even before they had to go live with Aunt Katherine at her worst, but she had never seen so much of it at once, and usually it was gone in an instant. Even if someone was sick with something that wouldn’t go away immediately, they were shut away from the rest of the family at once, in the hopes it wouldn’t spread.
The spectacle was unpleasant enough that it took a minute for the message begun before it appeared and finished after to sink in: that the trick for the day was to learn how to make it go away. Well, she could stand behind that. If she was somewhere with someone bleeding all over the place and there was no one available to fix the problem, she’d rather fix it herself than wait around for someone to show up. She took out her wand and smiled brilliantly at Autumn Collins when the older girl spoke to her.
She didn’t know Autumn, though she’d expected the girl to be the new Crotalus prefect and had taken it as a bad sign when she did not. Sam Bauer was out of the question, all things considered, but if she could have both of the other two fifth year Crotali…There was something as mechanical, as wearying, about the thought as there was about her smile, as there was about the moment of wondering, comparing herself to Autumn, if her darker looks weren’t a hair too much, too dramatic, to be really pretty, but she was so used to thinking it that there was really nothing else to think. A Collins would be a good addition to her collection of friends and allies, so she’d get a Collins now. “Of course,” she said, as though nothing could have made her happier.
She would have to take direction, of course, from an older girl. “Which spell would you like to work on first?” she asked, assuming they were to switch at some point so they would both know both spells. “I don’t really mind starting with either.” She was the leader of her little group; she wouldn’t seem too subservient even now, here at the beginning with an older girl.
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Eliza Bennett, Crotalus
Twelve of one, half a dozen of the other
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Eliza Bennett, Crotalus
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Autumn
December 08, 2011 10:08 PM
Which is which? by Autumn
Eliza Bennett was somebody that Autumn barely knew. The only thing that she knew about the younger girl was that she didn't get along with one of her roommates. The fifth year was rather glad not to have any herself. She didn't know if she could handle fighting with one of them. Autumn got stressed easily as it was and not only having an enemy but having to share a room with said enemy would make it even worse. She'd probably be exceedingly paranoid about having to watch her back every single second.And from what Autumn could tell, Eliza's roommate was extremely poorly behaved as well, the rumors she'd heard about that girl were horrifying, including that she'd been drinking wine at some party that Autumn hadn't attended, but Nina and Hope had. There was no way that girl would be prefect next year. It would have to be either Eliza, Jordan or Ryan.
Of course, on the other hand, Autumn was incredibly well behaved. She got exceptional grades and was nice or at least polite to people...and she still hadn't gotten it. She still didn't know what she'd done wrong but it meant that she wasn't perfect and while logically, the fifth year didn't really believe that she'd lost the position because of anything in the way she looked, but Autumn still felt flawed and the most obvious flaw she could find was her weight.
That was what she could spot, that was tangible and she could do something about it. The Crotalus could control her diet and her hunger. Autumn did not have to be weak and give in to it. Even if she could control nothing else in her life, she could certainly control that. She'd feel better then, when she lost at least ten pounds, maybe fifteen.
Eliza's question brought her back to Earth. "I suppose, I'll do the broken bones first." Autumn replied. She hoped this would be okay with the younger girl. One of last things she really wanted was conflict. She didn't want to be difficult. All she'd ever wanted to do was impress people.
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Autumn
Which is which?
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Autumn
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Eliza
December 10, 2011 4:36 PM
Depends on the person and the situation by Eliza
Autumn seemed a little distracted, but Eliza ignored it for now, blaming the class itself. CATS-level classes, knowing that everything they knew would have to be done in front of strangers in a few months, were stressful; getting older in general was stressful. People talked more and more about what your future would be, and she supposed a Collins would hear as much about marrying as she did, if maybe with more actual names in the equation than just Mother fussing about how there should be more available names.Or maybe not. It wasn’t as though this problem was exactly exclusive to her family. Eliza tried to look at it as a competition sometimes, in the hopes that it would somehow make the idea of getting married more appetizing, but it hadn’t worked. The only thing she liked about the idea was that Mother might be quiet for a little while before she started complaining about how Eliza’s husband was not prestigious enough to suit her and that That Female was illegitimate (at best; Mother had enjoyed talking about what a scandal that was) and thus sure to do even worse.
“That’s fine,” Eliza said, even though it left her to deal with the blood. She could pretend it belonged to a certain member of the class, and that cleaning it up would hurt like throwing vinegar laced with salt into each gash. Even that wasn’t as satisfactory as it might have been once, as it should have been, but it was something.
“Tergeo,” she intoned, picking a wound at random. Much of the blood went, leaving a reddish-orange residue on the fake skin. “Ick,” she added, finding this somehow worse than the actual part where the dummy had been bleeding all over the place. “At least it’s not hard. I’m still going to have to tell my little brother he doesn’t want to be a Healer, though.” That had come up for some reason over the summer, but she couldn’t in good conscience recommend the profession to him if this was the view he’d get every day.
Of course, she was a girl. A strong-minded manly man might not mind so much as she did. Eliza had never seen what was supposed to be so superior about guys and men, but she guessed they must have had something going for them, to in so many cases be in charge. Mother had always criticized Father for treating her too much like a son instead of a girl, after all, passing along the same lessons and advice to her that he did to Paul as though she were an heir and might amount to something besides a friend for her nephews to rely on if they needed to, or at best a way into a certain business or part of the country for them.
“Of course, he’s probably already changed his mind,” she admitted. “Do you have younger siblings?” To get Autumn in her camp, or even be really sure there was a chance of doing so, really, she had to get to know her better. Plus, it was one of the easier ways to strike up a conversation, turning it to the other person. If Autumn didn’t like to talk about herself, Eliza would have to think of something else, she couldn’t have anyone else resent her, but it was a start.
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Eliza
Depends on the person and the situation
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Eliza
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Autumn
December 20, 2011 8:14 AM
And in this case? by Autumn
The elder Crotalus smiled. "Good job." She told Eliza. Autumn felt slightly guilty sticking the fourth year with the blood. which was yucky, but she had thought that it might be easier and Autumn needed to succeed at challenges. Failure would be unacceptable to her. She was already too fat-which she would work her hardest to fix-she didn't need to fail in this too.Besides, blood was messy and the fifth year hated mess. Autumn kept her room as neat as a pin. Everything super organized, everything in it's place. It was how she functioned best. She once again thought it was probably for the best that she didn't have roommates. What if they were slobs? Autumn would never say anything to them, never get on their cases about such things. The fifth year didn't like conflict and she wouldn't have wanted to come across nasty or difficult to live with. Inevitably, Autumn would be the one to suffer in that situation. Things were much better the way they were.
At least in that respect. As far as the Crotalus was concerned things were far from ideal in her life. She felt she wasn't good enough, that her grades wouldn't be good enough, that she was too chubby, that she'd never find a husband. After...what her father had done with his first marriage, she and Willow had quite a bit to make up for. Not that Autumn didn't love Lily. She did, she admired her more than anyone. Still, it meant the fifth year had to try harder, be more perfect.
"Oh, yes." Autumn replied. "A younger sister, Willow. She's eight." Willow was very different from either her or Lily. The youngest Collins was artistic like the fifth year but far more relaxed. "I don't think she'll be a Healer though." Girls typically did not have careers,in their world. Lily was an exception, probably because of her...circumstances. It was pureblood girls that didn't work, and her older sister was not a pureblood.
Or maybe it was because she was strong and independent-minded. Something Autumn was not. She was more than happy to just get married and paint in her free time, though the part about giving her husband heirs filled her with discomfort. Nothing against babies once they were born, except they made an awful mess, but getting pregnant did not appeal to her in the slightest. Autumn felt she was big enough already as it was.
" Episkey " She said, doing the proper motion and directing it at a broken bone. The fifth year smiled, pleased when it worked out. She always took things hard and to have a melt down in front of all these younger students would make matters worse. Autumn needed to maintain composure. "Is your brother your only sibling?" She asked. "He's a second year, right?" The fifth year had tried her best to learn who was who within her own house, just in case she had been made prefect. Quite obviously, she had not but the memorization had stuck.
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Autumn
And in this case?
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Autumn
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Eliza
December 21, 2011 4:42 PM
Well, what do you think? by Eliza
Eliza offered Autumn a slightly toned-down, slightly more genuine-seeming, version of her smile when the older girl complimented her charmswork. “Thank you,” she replied, inclining her head in acceptance of the praise. Praise from other females was a pretty rare commodity in her world, and while being good at cleaning up blood wasn’t something that really fit in with the life she was supposed to have, the kind of person she was supposed to be, Eliza had been bred from birth, as her father and great-grandfather had been before her, to snap up any good thing she could get her hands on without hesitation or remorse. Including compliments which did not appear, to the best of her judgment, to be backhanded; those that were, she was to accept and then turn so they backhanded the would-be backhander. But she didn’t think she’d have that problem, much, with Autumn here.She was amused, though, by the comment about how Autumn doubted her sister would turn out to be a Healer. It was nice to see that the other girl had a sense of humor after all. Eliza’s impression of her had always been that she was actually a lady, rather than just pretending like the rest of them, and so unapproachable. “I don’t expect it of anyone in my family, either,” she said, thinking of the look on Mother’s face if anyone actually did something so lowly as become a practicing Healer. The kind who bought his way into a comfortable office and management position – certainly. But not the kind she thought they were discussing, and certainly not the girls. Mother would be scandalized if they even thought of such a thing.
Sometimes, Eliza almost regretted that. She was going to be fifteen in a week and she already found society absolutely exhausting, already found constantly cultivating and maintaining allies and scheming – however, she thought bitterly, unsuccessfully – to take down her enemies and thinking about relatives a burden rather than the great pleasure of her life. Her temperament wasn’t submissive enough, either, for her to be one of those women whose sole interest was in their children while other women in their family took care of the political aspects of belonging to a family; the very idea seemed strange, since her mother was nothing like that, at least with her. But she didn’t have options besides those two, so she would have to resign herself to it.
“Nice job,” she returned Autumn’s earlier compliment when the older girl smiled after casting her charm, assuming the smile meant it had gone well. The question surprised her, though. “Paulie? Oh, yes.” She paused to sort out her answer better. She hadn’t expected her brother to actually be something Autumn was aware of. Maybe she had underestimated this girl a lot. Well, she could fix that now. “I mean, yes, he’s in second year. I have two more brothers and a sister at home, though.” She smiled. “We’re a big family.”
Well, they were working on it, anyway. Uncle Vic would never have any children because of his condition, and none of them had apparently ever really expected it of Aunt Katherine even before she met the Careys because of her…her other condition, but her other uncles and their cousins did. Not so many, generally, as Father and Mother, but then, Father was the money man. The Bennetts were on the rise, anyway, and they’d all help in that. No matter how unpleasant the things they had to do to help might be for them. It was why they’d all been born, after all.
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Eliza
Well, what do you think?
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Eliza
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