On prose and the incidence of coincidence. on Charms

Professor Wright and Tatiana Vorontsova

March 27, 2018 4:52 PM

On prose and the incidence of coincidence. by Professor Wright and Tatiana Vorontsova

Gray looked at the paper one more time, just to ensure that what was before him had not changed. It had not changed, and so he sighed as he looked back up from the paper and to its alleged author.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your afternoon, Tatiana,” he said slowly and clearly to the second year girl he had summoned. “But there’s a problem with your test.”

Tatiana frowned. “Problem,” she repeated.

“Do you know what that means?” asked Gray, another potential problem with this conversation occurring to him.

“Yes,” said Tatiana, now impatiently, waving as though to dismiss him. “I know problem - we have problem too. What problem? I make very good that test.”

This statement, awkward grammar and all, was delivered with utter confidence. Perhaps she was trying to bluff? Or maybe she really didn’t think she had done anything wrong? Comparing the documents to her other tests had revealed a similar level of knowledge reflected. The problem was everything else about it.

“You did,” he said, beginning with the positive. “You did very well on this test.” He spoke even more deliberately, emphasizing his words there, hoping she’d pick up on the grammar with more repetition. He understood why the international students had formed the heart of a clique, but sometimes he didn’t think it really did them much good practically. “The problem is that it looks like you used a quill that writes for you on the test.”

Tatiana frowned. “I did not,” she said clearly.

“Then can you explain this?” he asked, handing her her paper - a paper which, though the handwriting did mostly look like Tatiana’s English script, was completely devoid of spelling errors, Cyrllic characters, and bizarre grammar. It even had her legal name on it, a concession to American sensibilities Tatiana had never made in writing that Gray had noticed. Tatiana’s frown deeped as she read it.

“I no write this,” she said flatly. She looked back at Gray, almost suspiciously, so far as he could tell around the blank canvas she presented to all but her little group of friends and that one time she’d apparently understood and appreciated a joke Gray had told the class. “Is a - funny?” she asked. “You think - that it is funny, show me this?”

“No,” said Gray. “I don’t.” She seemed to relax a little. “But it’s the only test paper submitted with your name on it, Tatiana, and I know you were here for the test. You took it and handed in a paper. And you know that quills that write for you aren’t allowed on exams.” There were a tiny number of exceptions, all involving paperwork, to that rule, but Tatiana didn’t qualify for one of them - the idea was that the anti-cheating quills used in CATS were stringent enough that it was best for students with difficulties to learn to write independently as much as possible in case the request for special accommodation for CATS was rejected. Quality of the prose wasn’t a major factor on those anyway - they were relentlessly practical exams.

“I not write this!” said Tatiana sharply, throwing the paper down on his desk. Her light blue-green eyes were sparkling with indignation. “I not have quill! I take test, I not write stupid Amerikanskoe nazvanie. Ya Vorontosva. Vy ponimaete? Menya zovut Tat’yana Vorontsova. Ya ne pisal eto - “

“Tatiana,” interrupted Gray. “I can’t understand you.”

“I am not write this,” said Tatiana.

“In which case you’ll need to retake it.”

“Yes! You give quill, now! I show.” Tatiana stuck her hand out imperiously, not seeming to realize that this amounted to a detention to do overdue work. He decided not to enlighten her. She seemed incredibly sincere, and after all that had happened this year...he was starting to doubt she actually had cheated, though that was the explanation that made the most sense. Nothing else made so much sense this year, so why should Tatiana?

“Not right now,” said Gray. “I’ll need to write another test. But I will provide you a quill to take it with.”

Strange, he’d thought, that it would turn out that the very thing he had wanted - Tatiana’s test paper to prove easier to score than he had expected - had materialized before him. That she’d cheat the very week he was particularly reluctant to deal with the most difficult papers due to an early-onset form of seasonal laziness...just as it had been odd, all those straws appearing at breakfast when he’d wanted a straw. He looked back at the paper and for a moment wondered if he had somehow charmed it himself. The only thing wrong with that idea was that it would have been accidental magic, and he was hardly young or old enough for that….

16 Professor Wright and Tatiana Vorontsova On prose and the incidence of coincidence. 1396 Professor Wright and Tatiana Vorontsova 1 5

Dorian Montoir

April 04, 2018 11:32 AM

You have incurred my wrath by Dorian Montoir

(OOC - posted directly under here for neatness but this library thread takes place between this post and the one above).

It mattered to Tatya that he was doing this. And it mattered to him too. Dorian clung on to the way he had felt about himself in the library, when Tatya had hugged and kissed him and called him her favourite. Because that feeling kept his feet moving, and pushed down the increasing sick-to-his-stomach feeling of nerves that kept trying to get bigger the closer he got to Professor Wright’s office. He couldn’t back out now anyway. And he didn’t want to… Until he did, the universe would feel broken. Tatya was upset. He was upset. And he was forced to place Professor Wright into a mental category where he did not wish him to be… Dorian knew that there were some horrible people in the world - he had the misfortune of having to live with one - and it naturally followed on that bad people did bad things. But Professor Wright was supposed to be a good person! Good people were not supposed to do bad things. It was so much more disappointing when they did, as they had so much further to fall… He didn’t like being upset with the Charms professor, and wanted a chance to mend things, a chance to forgive him.

But more than that, what he was doing was right. There might be some people who thought you should never talk back to a teacher. He wasn’t sure what some of the other Surnamed students would think of him… But to hell with the fact that Pureblood society said he shouldn’t. Pureblood society said a lot of things. And some of them contradicted each other, and you could break your back trying to jump through every hoop but even supposing you could do it all right - which you couldn’t, because it was impossible, but even if you could - if the wrong people disliked you, they would continue to dislike you, to make a reason why it was different in your case. Dorian had long since decided t it mattered much more to do what he thought was right than what anyone else told him was. They could tell him authority figures were never wrong until they were blue in the face, but it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference when he could see with his own eyes that they could be. And it was important also to preserve a lady’s honour, if you wanted to apply society’s rules - a perfect example of where the rules contradicted themselves, because he could not both never speak back to a teacher and defend Tatya’s reputation - but he didn’t even particularly care about finding a rule that said it was the right thing to do. His rules said it was, and that was good enough. And people might not immediately think that she was the kind of person who needed protecting - she was loud, seemingly confident, a Pecari and a Quidditch player… But she could be badly hurt by people’s poor opinion of her, and she had been. He loved Tatya, and he felt fiercely protective of her, just as he loved and wished to protect Émilie against any ills the world might throw at her. He had to try to put it right, whatever the cost to himself. Because she was his friend. Because her feelings were hurt. Because the accusation was untrue. Because older brothers were meant to fix things.

He knocked on the office door, entering when called.

“G-good afternoon, Professor,” he managed, and he was the same Dorian as always as he shuffled in and took a seat. A small boy, polite but a little self-conscious. And one could almost see the thoughts flying around behind his dark, serious eyes, even though they weren’t looking up but were focussed on his hands, hands which he was nervously fidgeting with whilst those thoughts got pulled together, because Dorian often took time to gather his words. Although this time, it wasn’t really the words that were the problem, it was just that the difference between lacking the words and lacking the bravery to say them probably looked awfully similar to an outside observer...But he had to. And so, pulling together all of the courage that he didn’t really possess, he looked up, looking Professor Wright steadily in the eye. “Tatya does not cheat,” he informed him seriously. And for all that he was a nervous thirteen year old boy, and Professor Wright was a teacher, the word ‘rebuke’ would not have been entirely unfitting in describing this remark. And the intensity and earnestness with which he met his teacher’s eyes conveyed that he regarded the suggestion that she had done so as an incredibly serious matter.

13 Dorian Montoir You have incurred my wrath 1401 Dorian Montoir 0 5

Professor Wright

April 05, 2018 7:59 PM

Right, then. Okay.... by Professor Wright

Students actually taking advantage of the existence of office hours was not unheard of, but nor was it something which happened with astonishing frequency. As a result, Gray had just decided it was acceptable to ease the tin of cookies in the bottom of his desk out when he heard a knock at his door, and he promptly dropped the tin, which bounced off the edge of the half-open drawer with a clang and landed on its lid in the bottom of the drawer with another. Gray winced.

There was, he decided, nothing for it. “Come in,” he called as he shoved the drawer shut again, and tried to look as though he had never heard a tin go clang in his life as he adjusted his glasses and peered at Dorian Montoir. “Hello, Dorian. What can I help you with?”

The boy was quiet for a moment, but Gray thought little of that - English was not, after all, Dorian’s strongest language. He was not really surprised until the Teppenpaw did speak, at which point Gray’s first reaction was a blank look. His second was very nearly, before he bit his tongue, the comment ‘come again?’, but he caught himself before he actually said it. Why were they talking about cheating? Who didn’t cheat? Tat -

Ah. Tatiana. French, so far as Gray could tell, disliked the letter ‘a’ nearly as much as Russian seemed to like it, but it was perhaps the most logical way to shorten that name and Tatiana and Dorian were both members of that little knot of second years…

“Well - that’s - “ Gray had never really contemplated ending up in this situation before. He had the distinct impression he was being rebuked by a twelve-year-old. That was...new. “I understand that you want to support your friend,” he pulled out of a hat, “but I can’t really discuss another student’s work with you, Dorian.”

This last part was, he thought, actually true - he was pretty sure it was somewhere in the booklet he’d been given about what was or wasn’t professional conduct when he’d been hired. There were legal papers to the effect that he couldn’t even discuss the work of students who were of age with their parents without the student’s consent, so he suspected talking to anyone but a parent or guardian about a second year was right out, even if Tatiana had been present and prepared to sign a document. Tatiana and Dorian weren’t old enough to make decisions yet, which was why they could be discussed with their parents whether they liked it or not but not anyone else...again whether they liked it or not. He thought.

16 Professor Wright Right, then. Okay.... 113 Professor Wright 0 5

Dorian

April 06, 2018 8:47 AM

No! It is wrong and not okay! by Dorian

“But she tells me already,” Dorian assured the professor, his tone calm and factual. He could understand that teachers couldn’t just discuss students with other students in general, but he already knew what Professor Wright had accused Tatya of, which was really the only part that was in any way private. “How else I would know about this? Her paper have no mistakes. You think that she used the spelling-correctly quill,” he summarised. “And she agrees that I come talk to you.

“She does not do this,” he reiterated his belief of her innocence. His tone was less firm this time. No less convinced, but there were limits to how long he could solidly stare down a teacher and maintain a commanding tone for, and those limits were, apparently, around the three second mark. Dorian was a fairly good student in Charms, but he did better on those spells which required whimsy or flourish. His progress in anything that required a ‘commanding tone’ was usually somewhat slower - he had struggled to get his fork to halt abruptly rather than just dwindle to a stop - and the fact that he had managed it at all spoke volumes about the extent to which he cared about the issue at hand. “She is not a bad person.”

13 Dorian No! It is wrong and not okay! 1401 Dorian 0 5

Professor Wright

April 11, 2018 5:42 PM

Let’s just take a step back, shall we? by Professor Wright

Well. Dorian did seem to know the facts of the case, sure enough. Gray was not convinced this actually changed his position any, but at least he could honestly say that he had said no such things to the boy. There was that.

Dorian stopped sounding as though he were scolding as he continued, but he did not start sounding any less emphatic. Tatiana was, he supposed, fortunate in her friends. Marching into a teacher’s office to defend oneself was daring enough - doing it for someone else was quite another level of reckless. Even if the teacher in question was, well...Gray.

He looked startled, he knew, when the discussion abruptly switched from a question of what Dorian’s friend had or had not done to one about what sort of person she was. “I never said she was,” said Gray, hoping this was Dorian’s own embellishment and that Tatiana hadn’t thought he meant that.

He did, privately, think, independent of morality, that Tatiana was too smart to have cheated this way if she’d known it to be cheating. It was easy to hear the somewhat childish (well, more childish than was age appropriate) way Tatiana and Dorian spoke and assume this meant they were intellectually younger than they looked as well. Gray, a man who for years had fed himself with words, knew better. That Tatiana in particular, with a native language so far removed from English, could communicate at all was a sign of intelligence - undeveloped intelligence in some ways, he thought, intelligence to a point hindered by her personality (Gray often used assignments where students were asked to think of practical applications for their lessons because it was good for the students, but he also couldn’t quite help doing a bit of armchair psychoanalysis on the results he got), but the mere fact that they were passing their exams meant, he was near-sure, that there was necessarily a streak of brains and perseverance in both Tatiana and Dorian that would have done any Aladren proud. This meant they were smart enough that if they decided to cheat, they’d probably cheat well.

“No, Dorian,” he continued out loud. “Whatever happened, I’m sure it’s the result of a misunderstanding. And if it was just a spelling quill - if I knew it was just a spelling quill - that would be one thing, but since I didn’t know about it, I can’t be sure it wasn’t the kind of quill that writes more than you tell it - that might put down ideas that aren’t Tatiana’s. Does that make sense?” he decided to check. “She’s not being punished because I don’t know what happened, but I have to know that her work is all her work to grade it. I’m sorry if she - didn’t understand me.” Or had just presented the story to her friend in a way which...simplified or exaggerated it a bit. Not that he’d blame her at all - it was human nature - but he suspected Dorian might throw down a gauntlet at the suggestion.

16 Professor Wright Let’s just take a step back, shall we? 113 Professor Wright 0 5

Dorian

April 15, 2018 1:13 AM

How about we discuss philosophy and unicorns? by Dorian

A look of anger passed across Dorian’s face at the suggestion Tatya had done more than correct her spelling, and he hastily lowered his gaze, knowing that looking angrily at a teacher was crossing a line, but not sure he could meet Professor Wright’s eyes right now without showing that. He was bad at not showing his feelings.

He firmly pushed that issue to one side - he definitely needed to come back to it, but he needed first to think through what the Professor had said... It was a bit confusing… He was saying that he didn’t think Tatya was a bad person, and that this wasn’t a punishment. But he was saying he didn’t know that Tatya hadn’t cheated, and how was that different than saying he thought she had? Was it a subtlety of English that he simply didn’t understand? Or was Professor Wright… cutting hairs into quarters? Or was he just phrasing something as politely as possible even though it meant the same thing? And how was it not a punishment? Tatya had to redo work that others did not. His introduction to philosophy had mentioned Abelard and intentions of actions - something he needed to look further into, especially as the philosopher in question was French, and so he might be able to find it at home, in a language he could more easily understand. He was torn… He would have said the intention behind an action made a difference, and he still believed it did. That Professor Wright did not see this as punishment improved matters. But the end results were still not satisfactory. Tatya had to carry out actions that were the same as a punishment, and she was upset, both of which were wrong, even if the action was not ill-intentioned. Under any other circumstances, it would have been an interesting debate but Tatya was upset and had been wronged, and that was the thing that mattered most to him. And he wasn’t sure that philosophy was going to comfort her much.

“I understand your English,” was the first thing he said, because he thought that any intimation of ‘not understanding’ might lead to Professor Wright re-explaining with simpler words, and he did not need that.

“I think I understand your meaning with your actions… You think is ok because you do not have the idea of punishing. But Tatya must carry out the same action like she was punished. I mean, if you were punishing, you would still do the same to her. Whether your feeling about whether or not is punishment makes any difference… Depends which philosopher you ask,” he said, entirely seriously and without any notion of how precocious and pretentious he verged on being with this statement, “I do not like that she must do the action of the punishment even if you do not have the feeling of punishment - she still loses her time and must work again, so she is still punishmented. Because those things give suffering to her, however you feel about it. And she is upset. Both of those are wrong things. And you…. You say it upside down. You… do not know that she is not cheating?” he tried to recreate Professor Wright’s sentence, stumbling clumsily over the double negative. “This is the same as saying ‘maybe she cheats,’ no?

“And to say she uses the idea quill and not the spelling quill,” his tone, he knew was verging on scornful and he tried to check it. He screwed his eyes shut, placing his balled up fists against his forehead, and taking a deep breath, knowing that he was supposed to keep his temper… But Tatya had definitely not done that, and the accusation hurt him on a deeply personal level. Tatya’s ideas were good enough. She did not need to cheat in that way. And if Professor Wright was entertaining the possibility that she had, it was because he couldn’t separate out the quality of their ideas from the quality of their English. “Tatya can make ideas well. Just not English,” he said with forced calm. We’re not stupid, he wanted to yell. “She is not a cheating type of person. And you do not know that she does cheat - you say so,” So there is no excuse for hurting her! “If you do not know, why… why choose the bad choice? The one that… that is not... ” he sighed in frustration at his inability to find the words in English. That you did not say bad things or do bad to people without being certain was the only way he could think to say it and that was ugly and nonsensical. But the Professor was being unfair and unjust. An image from one of his and Jehan’s conversations flashed through his mind. The unicorn of righteousness. He wanted to unleash it on their professor right now. “You can know what I mean with… presomption d’innocence? he tried, hoping that it might be one of those terms where the English was close enough to the French, finally opening his eyes. He did a double take. Across Professor Wright’s desk were three pieces of paper. The writing on them was in large, angry capital letters, though still bore the hallmarks of being Dorian’s writing due to the occasional swirls and flourishes. And the fact that they were in French. The three thoughts he had wanted to yell.

NOUS NE SOMMES PAS BETES

IL N’Y A PAS AUCUN EXCUSE POUR BLESSER MA SOURETTE!

JE VAIS DECHAINER LA LICORN DE LA DROITURE A VOUS!

Dorian stared at them in surprise. And then looked to Professor Wright in confusion. Given what they were discussing, this could not be good…

13 Dorian How about we discuss philosophy and unicorns? 1401 Dorian 0 5

Professor Wright

April 15, 2018 6:41 PM

...Cool by Professor Wright

Depends which philosopher you ask. Well, that had to be one of the more interesting sentences a second year had ever produced, at least in Gray’s presence. He certainly would not have produced it as a second year. It was not exactly relevant to the discussion – well, at least not to the point Gray had been trying to make to Dorian, anyway – but it was impressive nevertheless.

And rather interesting. He couldn’t help wondering how on Earth this bit of the situation had come about – a nice Teppenpaw boy sticking up for a Pecari girl to their professor. If he had imagined either Dorian or Tatiana going to war over the other, he would have imagined Tatiana as the aggressor. Even had she not been a Pecari, after all, it would have been difficult to think of her as a delicate, fading flower in need of a champion – she went out of her way to draw attention to herself with her sartorial choices, her hats and gloves and jewels, like a peacock. It was not a trait Gray understood at all, having generally always preferred the woodwork for himself, but it seemed deliberate. Dorian, on the other hand, was highly conscientious, and Teppenpaws were rarely flashy, even this strange new scary subspecies which had infected the school since his return…

He tried to remember what else he knew about these children. They were both purebloods of some sort, weren’t they? And both rather northerly. Perhaps they were engaged and Dorian therefore felt a sense of obligation. Even most purebloods, however, didn’t pair their children off this young, so his imagination was left to try to fill in the blanks, at least until his good sense reminded him that he was Not Allowed to use his students as characters on the rare occasion he had time to write.

Time to write – to think that should become a luxury! Overall, Gray found teaching less unpleasant than he had expected it to be. He liked his students, he liked his colleagues, and he found plenty of things to keep his mind engaged. Just the same, though, Sonora kept long hours and he was often, in the evenings, too tired to take up his pen and do anything productive with it even on those nights when he didn’t have other work – grading or lesson planning or reviewing – to do. This was frustrating, but not nearly so much as the other thing which could occur: a sudden flash of an idea, an idea so clear that he could almost perceive the inputs his various senses would receive if the scene had been real, something he desperately wanted to get down – and which he was compelled to ignore because he had other work to do. Such as explaining that the actual punishment for confirmed cheating was a fair bit different from asking someone to redo work to a second year, though admittedly this was a bit outside the norm of work….

When he first noticed three note-papers spreading themselves out on his desk, he initially thought it might somehow be his own doing, as he was busy mentally drafting how to explain the situation further to Dorian. Then, however, words began to appear, and he knew they weren’t his because he didn’t write French – or do anything else with it, for that matter. He stared at these in confusion, and then at Dorian in confusion, and then Dorian looked up and stared at him in confusion….

“I’m afraid I don’t read French,” he said. “So you’ll have to help me understand these, I’m afraid. How did you do that?”

The two comments weren’t really connected, just thoughts that occurred more or less at the same time. The latter was easily the more important, though. This was as peculiar, he thought, as anything which had happened this year, if less spectacular than some of the other displays….

16 Professor Wright ...Cool 113 Professor Wright 0 5

Dorian

April 16, 2018 7:49 AM

And not about these bits of paper by Dorian

Professor Wright said that he was ‘afraid’ twice without looking like he was actually at all scared, and which was a very odd reaction to some bits of paper, and a very odd thing for a teacher to admit to a student, even if it had been true which it didn’t seem like it was. Dorian suspected that ‘afraid’ was currently not meaning ‘scared’ but some sort of…. Politeness. Which was possibly being deployed sarcastically given the circumstances. Like when teachers said ‘Excuse me but what do you think you’re doing?’ They did not wish to be excused. They just wanted to know what the hell you were doing.

“I-” I didn’t do that. He cut off his first instinctive response because he doubted very much that he would be believed, given that there were exactly two people in the room and only one of them spoke French. And it was his writing. And they were his thoughts. He didn’t even believe that he hadn’t done this - clearly he had. “I don’t know,” he replied, focussed on the second question. But not knowing was rarely a satisfactory answer. "I have my eyes closed… I don’t know how-" Professor Wright had presumably seen physically how they came to be there. He knew that and Dorian didn’t. Dorian sort of wanted to ask him how this had happened, but he was clearly the one who was responsible for an explanation here. But he couldn’t give one. He didn’t know. He really didn’t.

“I did thought those things,” he admitted, feeling panicked. They were already talking about words having done things they shouldn’t in Tatya’s paper, and now he’d done this, which… which wasn’t the same but was also probably bad especially as Professor Wright wanted him to explain, and he couldn’t, "I thought them but-" he was about to say that he hadn’t said them but he… hadn’t. Still hadn’t. “But… But I don’t know how they got writed – wrote – written?” why was that verb so, SO stupidly complicated given that people had such regular need of it. “Really, I do not,” he insisted plaintively and earnestly. He might be in Professor Wright’s bad books by now, for coming and complaining but that didn’t mean he’d do every bad thing. He wasn’t a liar, and he didn’t want to be branded one. Or a… a… He wasn’t sure what the word for someone who had done this on purpose would be, in any of his languages, because he wasn’t really sure what this was, in terms of a crime. It was words. Words he hadn’t meant to happen. And couldn’t explain.

“Am I in trouble?” he asked, clearly rather frightened by the prospect. He didn’t want to be in trouble. He did not like trouble. The risk of trouble had been worth it to defend Tatya, but that had been different. Now there were strange bits of stupid paper that he couldn’t explain and he might be branded as… something for making them.

13 Dorian And not about these bits of paper 1401 Dorian 0 5

Professor Wright

April 16, 2018 4:12 PM

I think we will have to touch on them. by Professor Wright

Dorian’s explanation – or explanation of inability to explain – of what had just happened scattered its tenses far and wide, its verb patterns even further, and yet Gray sort of wished it had been more incoherent. If it had been more incoherent, after all, or even in French, he would not have understood that this was yet more Inexplicable Behavior.

Something, Gray thought, was not right. There was too much of this going on. Yes, it was a Ball year, so there were stressed-out teenagers everywhere, and yes, maybe someone was playing pranks – that would explain Selina’s brief stint with pink hair better than anything else – and yes, Jozua Sparks was…Jozua Sparks, but – it was too much. It was as if magic itself were going haywire – he himself had observed straws appearing out of nowhere and doors opening that had had no good reason to open. It was…

…It was not relevant right now. He did believe this was an accident, and Dorian certainly looked stressed enough for it to be an innocuous one. Between his philosophical indignation with Gray, desire to defend Tatiana’s honor, and evident struggle to communicate all this in reasonably respectful English, it was not inconceivable that any second year might not…slip a bit. Just as Nathaniel Mordue’s screaming wooden blocks and face-punches could be written off as frustration from a first year whose magical abilities were not cooperating, and Jozua as a normal teenager in proximity to a girl…except when he’d apparently done it over the holidays as well, but – not relevant. At least not right now.

“Written,” said Gray automatically when Dorian stumbled over the verb, but he concentrated when the rambling explanation concluded in a question.

He was not quite sure what to do with this situation. On one hand, his vague idea of How Teachers Should Behave dictated a strict response to anything even remotely – or even possibly, as he still had no idea what the notes said, just that they were clearly angry – disrespectful. On the other hand, that didn’t seem to make sense to him. When one started punishing people for thoughts, one was a dictator, and dictators, according to his reading on the subject, frequently got stabbed. Gray did not wish to be stabbed. Punishing someone for being angry with him was also fairly pointless – an exercise that would just breed resentment, which would produce more anger and thus extend the reaction he wished to discourage. And accidental magic – well, he could at least see the arguments for punishing someone who did something destructive, anyway, deterrence and all that, but at the same time, it induced stress and stress was the thing that produced the reaction he did not want. Plus, something strange was going on – he didn’t know what, or whether it affected this situation or not, but something was….

“No,” he said after a moment’s thought. “This was clearly an accident – “ either that or Dorian was the best liar in this school, which Gray just couldn’t quite credit – “and I don’t believe in punishing people for what they think even when I know what that actually is.” He was more certain that ever that the thoughts were unflattering now, but this was another thing he couldn’t confirm, at least not without going far out of his way to do so. He did, however, see a way to use this to his advantage in the discussion they had originally been having…. “Just as I’m not punishing Tatiana for the incident with her paper – punishment would be, well, punishment, making her clean classrooms or sort books or that kind of thing.” He decided to keep to himself how devoutly grateful he was that he had not had enough cause, by his own reckoning, to give her detention – if he read the girl right, giving her a disciplinary consequence that required menial work of her would probably result in another assignment to detention before the first one was complete. “Have you been having problems with controlling your magic?” he asked, returning to the other issue on the table. He did not have a theory as such, but he was an Aladren; collecting data was second nature even to him, who rarely used much of it.

16 Professor Wright I think we will have to touch on them. 113 Professor Wright 0 5

Dorian

April 17, 2018 10:09 AM

Can I give you the Cliffnotes version? by Dorian

“Right, thank you,” Dorian nodded, when Professor Wright told him that it was ‘written.’ “I mean,” he added, realising how it might have sounded like he hadn’t quite heard, “Right… correct, yes I understand - with the ‘r,’” he really wanted to kick something, “Bon sang!” he muttered exasperatedly, flopping back in his chair, looking rather beaten. He was getting to the point of being thoroughly exhausted almost everyday - between operating constantly in a language that challenged him, his schoolwork, and all the extra reading he did because reading and talking about ideas and learning languages were what interested him, his brain was more often than not a little fried. And then realising how that might have sounded from his tone of voice, clarified, “I’m not swearing.

“And also not with these,” he added, glancing at the papers on the desk one more time, with their angry capital letters and proliferation of exclamation marks. He hadn’t wanted to translate them for Professor Wright, and he seemed to be being allowed that grace. And now he questioned whether that was such a good thing, because the professor could easily assume they were much, much worse than they were. He hesitated between not wanting to reveal his private thoughts, and not wanting the professor to have a worse impression of what they might be than necessary. “They do not say insults, or those kinds of things,” he assured him, trying for a middle ground of explaining but not necessarily translating. “I am not that kind of rude person, even in my own head. Just… they are thoughts of mine,” he hoped that in itself was an understandable enough reason to not really want to share them… for all that he accidentally had, “And maybe not the… right voice for how I would say out loud. I’m sorry,” he added apologetically, because for all Professor Wright seemed willing to call it an accident, he felt somewhat guilty. “I did not mean to…” to what? Shout my thoughts onto pieces of paper? Expose you to my inner monologue in angry print? Confuse you with exclamatory written French? “...whatever this is,” he gestured futilely at the sheets of parchment.

As Professor Wright asked him about controlling his magic, he bit back the response that he was thirteen years old because he was well aware that he had just done something that he couldn’t explain and that Professor Wright being willing to treat it as an accident was a good thing. But he shouldn’t be having problems like this. It was so childish. It was like being asked if he still wet the bed.

“No,” he replied, keeping his voice even, “I don’t have any more problems.” His classwork was good, he worked conscientiously and usually got good results within a reasonable time. He didn’t think to mention the sweater because he was still convinced that Jehan had left it there himself, and even all their joking about Dorian’s awesome summoning powers didn’t make him link it to the current situation, because Professor Wright had asked about problems and control and neither of those were words he associated with what had happened in the library.

His mind went back to what he’d said about Tatya…About making her clean things if she cheated. Which didn’t make much sense if he wanted a paper to mark. And then Dorian realised, the difference between ‘I don’t know that she didn’t cheat’ and ‘I think she cheated.’ A confirmed cheater would, of course, get a zero.
“Do not know that she isn’t cheater… Same as believe she may be innocent,” he summarised. “So. Do again is…” he wanted to say ‘a second chance’ but that didn’t quite fit because only people who had messed up or done wrong needed those, and he was still sure Tatya did not fall into those categories. He still did not like that Tatya had to do the work again, when he knew that she had done nothing wrong the first time, but he understood that Professor Wright was being as lenient as he was able, “is compromise,” he tried instead. It still wasn’t quite the right idea, because Tatya hadn’t really had choices, but it was the compromise Professor Wright had reached in his own head between letting her off completely when she may have cheated (even though she had not) and coming down on her hard when there was a chance that she was innocent (which she was).
“I will try to explain this way to her,” he nodded, recognising that there probably wasn’t much chance of getting back to a rational discussion at this point, and that he’d probably said as much as Professor Wright was going to listen to…

Glancing first at the professor for permission, he gathered the offending bits of parchment, making his way to the door. He hesitated… He had told Tatya that it was worth the cost to himself to try to defend her, and he stood by that remark. But… well, it would be nice to know what that cost had been.

“Professor…. Do you… dislike me now? Or… or think more low of me?” he checked.

OOC - ‘bon sang!’ I got given as the translation of ‘For crying out loud!’ though other places render it different ways, including going as strong as ‘Damnit!’ but I am assuming things close to the first translation, and Dorian’s remark about not swearing is intended to be truthful. I believe it would literally translate to ‘good blood’ which also makes it an excellent choice for Purebloods.

13 Dorian Can I give you the Cliffnotes version? 1401 Dorian 0 5

Professor Wright

April 21, 2018 10:09 PM

Sure, let's go with that. by Professor Wright

Ah, there was the reason Dorian, at least, was in Teppenpaw instead of Aladren. Gray had to admit that the child began to seem far more alien to him with this pronouncement about his character than their language difference could have ever accounted for. Who didn’t feel at liberty to insult others all they liked in the privacy, if nowhere else, of their own heads?

Of course, the boy was quite possibly lying. People did do that to adults, and while he sometimes kind of forgot it, Gray was one of those. Lying to him was a perfectly logical thing for Dorian to do under the circumstances. But could he be telling the truth? A person who thought like that would be fascinating!

“I quite understand,” he said with a nod when Dorian failed to find a word for what it was he had not meant to do. Gray was not at all sure that was a language barrier right there, as he was not at all sure how he’d summarize it in English, either.

Dorian had no other problems. That was good. Perhaps he was just in that much of a temper and, being a Teppenpaw, he had no healthy way to express it and therefore lashed out magically when sufficiently overwhelmed. That did happen, Gray supposed – he’d heard of adults who started losing control under severe emotional stress, though for the life of him Gray couldn’t imagine what about him punishing another student would inspire that kind of rage and frustration. Perhaps it was just one of Those Days, where the perceived insult to Tatiana and the language difficulty had just…become too much. “Very good,” he said.

Also good was the fact that Dorian had apparently put together what Gray had been trying to say about the difference between a punishment and asking a student to redo a task where there were questions, but no certainties. “I – yes, that’s as good a way to put it as any,” he agreed when the arrangement was described as a compromise.

To his relief, it seemed this was enough to conclude the interview. For a moment Gray considered stopping Dorian from gathering up the bits of paper, but what on earth could he do with bits of paper with angry scrawls in a language he didn’t even understand on them? He knew a little of the art of analyzing what spells were on an object, but not that much, and he imagined the text would fade soon enough anyway – he supposed this would technically qualify as a form of conjuration. An interesting question to contemplate no doubt. He looked up in surprise from contemplating this as Dorian, near the door, asked yet another unexpected question.

“No,” said Gray, and considered whether this was too blunt and direct to be effective. “I – understand you wanted to defend your friend,” he elaborated. “That was good of you.” Though he wouldn’t suggest repeating the behavior if the next person to offend Tatiana happened to be the headmaster – but that probably fell into the realm of things it was inappropriate to say to or in the presence of students.

16 Professor Wright Sure, let's go with that. 113 Professor Wright 0 5