Professor Wright
September 09, 2018 11:14 PM
Time for liftoff, Beginners (First and Second Years). by Professor Wright
On paper, Beginners should have been the easiest class to teach. The spells they learned were, well, beginner-level, introductory, basic, elementary. In theory, any teacher in the school could have covered for Gray – most of the spells were little different than they had been in Beginners Charms classes for the past twenty or thirty years. The theory might have taken an hour to read up on, but it was purposefully simple, what the first and second years were taught – anyone with a reasonable facility for reading English could understand as much as the Beginners needed to. Simple, Beginners was. Easy. On paper.In practice, of course – well, it wasn’t always the most difficult course. That was often the Intermediates, the largest class and the least mentally stable. For the first few weeks of the year, however, the first years gave their Intermediate colleagues a good run for their money, and he had to somehow keep them from setting the school on fire while also imparting some kind of useful information to the second years. There were times when, struggling to teach small people the difference between a swish and a flick while also providing a minimum of supervision to the second years without losing his mind and demanding to know what exactly was so difficult, when Gray had the dazed thought that there was a certain heroism to dealing with this age group – at least for the first few weeks.
This most trying of interludes was, however, hopefully over – for the most part. They could perform some of the simplest charms without injury to themselves or others, they had the basic wand movements down, and it was time for their first experiment in breaking physics.
“Hello, everyone,” he greeted them. “Is everyone ready to make objects fly?”
This was an important day in the lives of young wizards, and he had made an effort to dangle it in front of the first years over the past few weeks, using old skills for spacing out events and building to suspense as best he could as they studied the theory – or a very simplified version thereof; in Intermediates, they would have to study the difference between Levitating an object and actually changing its weight with things like the Featherlight Charm – and practiced wand movements over and over again.
For the second years, it had, alas, been less interesting, and there was little to be done about that, he thought – they had first had to make up for summer slip, and had been levitating progressively heavier objects since then while the first years caught up with them, with him checking off their work and making sure they didn’t hit too many first years in the head on purpose. That task, he thought, was going to get harder today….
“Second years, today, you’re going to take another step forward,” he informed them brightly, making the effort to smile – a neat trick about wearing glasses was that it was much easier to smile even if one didn’t really mean it when one’s eyes were obscured at all times. “You’ll be working with these cushions – they weight about a pound each – and you will make them go back and forth in the air after you levitate them, all this with the spell you already know. It’s a feat of concentration, which is why you’re using cushions.” Even if they dropped the cushions directly over their own heads, they shouldn’t be injured enough to require the medic, an individual Gray still felt slightly awkward around because she was the one other staff member who knew what his private space here looked like.
“First years – today is your welcome to the world of breaking physics,” he said. “You will notice on your desks that you each have a new feather quill.” That these were comparatively cheap ones he wouldn’t personally write with was a fact he found unnecessary to add – for one thing it was irrelevant, and for another thing, well, his budget for class props, particularly those which could be presented to students as mementoes of their successes once they demonstrated the skill to him. Besides, it was the rare first year who was going to write much of any substance anyway, particularly voluntarily. “Your task for this lesson is to perform the swish and flick with the incantation Wingardium Leviosa. Done correctly, this will make the feathers rise about five feet in the air and hover for you.
“As always, you may take several tries to get the hang of it – this is true for both years – and don’t get discouraged if you don’t master it today. Just the same, I will be watching to make sure you’re working,” he added, lest anyone get any ideas.
OOC: Welcome to Beginner Charms! This lesson takes place several weeks into the year, so your character has some knowledge of a few simple charms and some Charms theory; it’s not their first time holding a wand or meeting Gray. All posting rules apply. If you have questions IC, tag Professor Wright; if you have them OOC, ask on the OOC board or catch me (usually as Tatiana) in Chatzy. And, last but not least, have fun!
Subthreads: Just swish and flick. I'll try not to take anyone's eye out. by Malikhi Hill, Pecari with Beau Tate, Pecari
Re: Time for liftoff, Beginners (First and Second Years). by Caitlin Pierce, Crotalus
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Professor Wright
Time for liftoff, Beginners (First and Second Years).
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