Break it, fix it, and forget it, Beginners (Years I-II). on Charms

Professor Wright

August 28, 2019 1:35 PM

Break it, fix it, and forget it, Beginners (Years I-II). by Professor Wright

Eight a.m. was not a respectable hour. It was flagrantly indecent. It should have been banned.

Unfortunately, however, the world at large did not agree with him, and so Grayson Wright hauled himself to his classroom at on time despite having stayed up too long editing the night before. He had, however, considered joining the coffee-drinkers at breakfast, before deciding it would probably not worth the risk to test the effects of a largely unknown substance he hadn't tried in many years when he was already not his best,

He started to rub his eyes as the bell rang, but caught himself and adjusted his glasses instead. "Good morning everyone," he said. "It...looks like you don't have any assignments due this morning, so we'll get right into what we're going to learn about today."

He had not written any notes on the board ahead of time today, so he tapped his chalk with his wand to make it take notes for him while he spoke to the first and second years. "We're going to have a very practical lesson today," he informed them. "We're going to learn how to repair a lot of common objects - after we have a little fun destroying some of them," he added, just as straight-faced.

"First years, you're going to use a spell called diffindo to remove the lace on these napkins," he said, pointing at the stack of lacy linens he had remembered to bring with him and put on the base objects table just off the side of his desk. "Once you have succeeded with that one, you'll put it back with reparo.

"Second years, you'll have the same basic task, but with more difficult materials," he informed them. "You'll be working with these wooden rods," he said, indicating the pile of wooden rods on the other side of the base objects table. The wood was fairly soft, as far as wood went - pine, he thought - but the rods were each about two inches in diameter. "I want you to split these lengthwise, and then repair them.

"A few things before any of you start, though," he added, his tone turning stern. This was important. He adjusted his glasses again. "Some of you may be thinking, 'Professor Wright has some of us working on wood - wood comes from plants - plants are alive.' That is true. I have used it on my houseplant before without any obvious ill effects. However, you must never use these spells on humans or animals. Diffindo would be an attack, and you would be in serious trouble with more than just me. Reparo is also not something you should use to try to heal an injured person or animal. It might in some cases work, but it will cause severe scarring. For some injuries, that scarring might make the situation worse, and there are much more effective Healing spells you'll learn when you're older. For now, none of you have the magical strength and dexterity to try to heal anyone, so keep your work only on inanimate objects, please."

That important warning given as clearly as he could, he relaxed again. "That said, raise your hand if you have any questions, or come to my desk and speak to me about it. If not, come get your supplies and get to work."

OOC: Welcome to Charms! To win your House the maximum number of points, remember all the site rules: meet the 200 word minimum, use good spelling and grammar, and don't try to control anyone else's characters. The more detailed and realistic you are, the better your marks will be, so get creative! If you have any questions, you can tag Professor Wright in your subject line (or, for OOC questions, on the OOC board). Also keep in mind that while you are permitted to write your characters having accidents or misbehavior happen, Professor Wright is paying attention and would intervene before most situations got very far out of hand. Keep all that in mind and have fun!

16 Professor Wright Break it, fix it, and forget it, Beginners (Years I-II). 113 Professor Wright 1 5

Ellie Alperton, Aladren

August 29, 2019 8:17 AM

Measure twice, cut once by Ellie Alperton, Aladren

Charms was the class which came closest, in Ellie’s opinion, to Disney magic. Or at least, the good parts of it. People got cursed or poisoned a lot too, but the nice things like magic carpets and singing crockery seemed more Charms-like. Ellie suspected that if Professor Wright knew what Disney was, he would not thank her for the comparison. He seemed to find it all very serious, which was rather amusing when the matter in question involved making things fly and making teacups dance. Whilst she supposed one must fly objects responsibly not to take someone's eye out, she still thought it was all rather more whimsical than his stiff demeanour implied, and she wondered whether there was a rule that all Sonora teachers had to be the opposite of what they taught - Professor Brooding, for example, seemed to make every effort to exude loveliness whilst instructing them to smush up bug guts and dice spleens and the like. To be fair, those were the only two examples she could think of. Some people might have added to the list the fact that the Transfiguration teacher was rigid and inflexible, because Professor Skies did have a reputation for being quite firm. However, Ellie knew that it was the Deputy Headmistress who had allowed her entry and made special arrangements for her, which spoke to her being decently open-minded. She couldn't really imagine the Transfiguration Professor being cross with people unless they'd actually done something wrong, and that seemed perfectly fair to Ellie. Professor Marsh seemed suitably wild, with his bushy beard, and Professor Hawthorne looked like she could hold her own in a fight. Professor Xavier... It was hard to tell how one would have to be to be the opposite of what one expected for a horticulturist. A vampire, perhaps, so that he was allergic to sun and didn't even eat any vegetables. It was hard to imagine anyone less vampiric. She supposed he was opposite to his subject material in that he was a human and not a walking, talking tree, like the Ents, and that this being a magical school that might have been entirely possible. It would have been sort of fun to have a tree teach you how to take care of it, but Professor Xavier was so nice that you couldn't really wish him any different than he was. The same was true of all of the teachers so far really. She didn't even hold Professor Wright's slight dullness against him because he also seemed gentle and very smart, and that was more important.

They were working on diffindo again today. They had already covered this on paper. Not as in they'd done the theory or read about it but they had literally sliced up a piece of paper. She had read that you could make paper decorations with much more speed and accuracy using this spell than scissors, though she suspected she was still a long way off having better fine motor skills with her wand than with more familiar tools. She had practised a few different shapes for homework and could do it, but always with raggedy results that looked like a preschooler had been hacking at the paper, so she still had a long way to go. The napkins for today's lesson put her in mind of another use, that of cutting out pattern pieces for dresses - not something she knew how to do but something which always looked fun in movies. Apparently, Professor Wright thought of something else entirely because he was warning them not to attack each other. Ellie glanced round at her classmates, wondering how necessary this warning was. She would no more have thought of attacking her classmates with this spell than she would have thought about stabbing them with her scissors. She hoped it was just teacherly over-caution which prompted him to say that, and that magical people didn't think it would be normal or fun to try this out on each other.

She took one of the frilly napkins. She had helped make dresses for some of her Barbies. She knew the relative feelings of scissors snipping through paper versus cloth - the thicker, heavier feel of each snip, a combination of the resistance from the material and the fact that her mother's sewing scissors were large heavy artifacts. She thought they might even have belonged to grandma first, if she was remembering right, and be made of iron, or some old metal that weighed more than modern scissors. It felt very serious to cut with them. There was their own weight, and then there was the abstract weight of them being Serious Scissors which were really for grown ups, and also the act of cutting fabric - not an everyday occurance, and usually forbidden. Ellie held all these sensations in her mind, trying to channel the feeling of the weight she put behind those actions as she levelled her wand at the napkin.

"Diffindo," she cast, trying to swish her wand evenly and smoothly. That was still the hardest part of all this. Words made sense. Even the funny ones they used here. Words could be written down and looked over again and again. And the more you looked into them, the more sense they often made. This one, for example, meant 'I cleave asunder' A slightly clearer way of putting that was to split in two, but Ellie wasn't sure why you'd choose to say that when you could talk instead about cleaving things asunder, which sounded far more dramatic and poetic. Wand movements though... You could write them down, or draw diagrams, but the fact was you were translating a thing that your body did into other terms. Sometimes, there was a clear link between the wand movement and the effect of the spell - it was easy enough to understand what 'a writing motion' meant, or sometimes there were equally plain and obvious words like 'a clockwise circle' but more often than not words like 'light and delicate' or 'sharp flick' or 'making sure the action comes from your wrist and not your elbow' were used and it was hard to know what those meant or whether she was really doing what it said. A lot harder than it was with saying a word, anyway.

In reaction to her best attempt at mirroring the diagram, the professor's demonstration, and ending the whole movement with a 'decisive shearing motion,' the lace split from the main body at intervals, more as if someone had taken a few tentative snips at it than thoroughly and firmly sliced it. At least it wasn't ruined though. It definitely reflected her approach to cutting things up, or making decisions in general - take it carefully, because you can't undo it. Except, of course, the whole point of this lesson was that she would be able to. Of course, she might take some practise with that spell too, which meant she was still hesitant to get too wild with her cutting. The professor had mentioned scarring in human subjects. She imagined ugly and obvious seams running down the fabric. She wondered whether being better at the type of repairing in question, for example sewing, led to neater results. Surely there had to be limits to magic, or reasons and needs for people to develop specific skills. If she could just magic clothes out of others, by expanding or repairing things she'd grown out of, or charming the colour, or snipping and transfiguring, no one would ever need to buy new clothes. Surely, everyone could not be fashion designer and seamstress rolled into one - there had to be more than power and control. Knowledge. Creativity. Limits to what the materials could take. She pulled out her charms notebook (Belle, because dancing crockery and enchanted roses seemed appropriate) and opened it to a blank page, noting these questions down with the corresponding character's pen. Professor Wright had said they could ask, but she was likely to have quite a lot more questions between now and the end of the lesson, and some might also get answered for themselves, so she decided to save them for now. The issue of the ugly repair job was still bothering her though. And the fact that she couldn’t stop thinking about it seemed to make it far more likely to happen, based on her understanding so far of magic - although maybe that only applied in Transfiguration.

“Excuse me,” she asked the person next to her, “Do you know, if we end up making an ugly job of repairing it, is there a way to undo that?”

13 Ellie Alperton, Aladren Measure twice, cut once 1456 Ellie Alperton, Aladren 0 5

Freddie Zauberhexen

August 30, 2019 10:40 PM

But the cutting part is faster! by Freddie Zauberhexen

Freddie liked these sorts of lessons. They were both very practical and helpful and all those good things, but also lots of fun. He got to break things, and then fix them, and he wasn't sure which was more satisfying. It was also the sort of lesson that he could relate back directly to his own experiences at home. That made it a bit easier to understand. While his mother and father didn't typically take the time to chop lace off stuff, he had seen them chop through bandages when they were too long, or clothes when someone was injured very badly and needed their clothes removed without any more time wasted. The idea of healing with reparo was not something that had crossed his mind, though, and actually made him a bit sick to consider.

He scanned looked around for Hana, who was undoubtedly more interested in the lace than the sticks, and caught her eye for only a moment before she turned to somebody else to work with. They exchanged only the briefest of looks, but it was enough for them.

Trade ya? he asked with raised eyebrows.

What's it worth? she taunted with her own expression.

More than I've got, his grimace and small chuckle replied.

They knew each other too well to hide anything and they'd spent a lot of time throwing looks at each other; it was not so hard to know what the other was thinking.

Before he could attempt the spell, Ellie turned to him and asked a question. He'd tried to talk to her often since they'd been sorted, but it was difficult when they were in different Houses and their only real time together was during class. Ellie was an Aladren, which meant she was focused probably, and she was a bit timid. Freddie tended not to be either focused or timid, and was weary of the way he affected others thusly. He made a point of not distracting classmates, as that was rude, so he hadn't worked with Ellie much throughout the term.

"I think so," Freddie assured her. "I don't know when-- if we would do it. The professor probably can." It was a hard sentence for him, full of conditionals, and whatever words like would are called. Still, those were all basically the same thing, right? Whatever. "Yours looks not bad!"

He surveyed her work with an appreciative smile, completely certain his would not look as neat. While she hadn't gotten all the way through, she also hadn't destroyed it. Taking heed that a soft approach might not get it all the way through, he turned to his own project with a fierce gaze. Lifting the side of the lace to peer underneath and examine it, he thought it was a bit like filleting a fish.

"Diffindo!" he demanded, slashing at his piece . . . and at his thumb which was annoyingly still in the way. Instead of separating the lace from the fabric, he'd merely cut off the napkin at the seam where the lace was joined. At least that was convenient. He took the piece of cloth and wrapped it around his thumb; it wasn't a bad wound, but it was certainly bleeding. "Merlins Bart! Ich weiß es verdammt noch mal besser," he swore in his native language.
"Got it. Oder. . . any ideas?"

OOC - I think the German translation there includes "damn" but it was Google's translation of "Merlin's beard! I bloody know better than that."

22 Freddie Zauberhexen But the cutting part is faster! 1452 Freddie Zauberhexen 0 5

Ellie

September 04, 2019 12:47 AM

And more dangerous by Ellie

"Thanks," she smiled, when Freddie complimented her work. She wasn't sure if he thought she'd cut it more than she had and that this was already a repair job, or whether he was just being nice about her current small step of progress. It was, at least, neat, if not impressive.

Ellie nodded. It made sense that Professor Wright would be able to fix their bad attempts. Although, given that he had mentioned scarring, there were some things which, once they had gone wrong, were wrong forever, and which even magic couldn't fix. Still, people were more complicated than pieces of cloth, and she supposed that even if she did botch this, it wasn't the end of the world. That was how she had to try and think, anyway, even though it still bothered her to make a mess. But you couldn't make an omlet without breaking eggs. Or, she wondered, if you were a witch, could you? Could you 'reparo' the shells back together, or would the contents need to fly back in too - which, if you wanted them in your omlet, wouldn't be very helpful. Also, technically you would have broken them, even if you couldn't tell. Maybe you could magic the contents out and leave the shell intact? She wasn't sure what the point of that would be, apart from the fact that this particular saying might not make sense to her classmates. She noted down the question, not because she necessarily planned to ask about it, but just because it made her brain stretch off to interesting places about what magic could and couldn't do, and she wanted to think more about that.

Now, however, was not the time for such musing, because Freddie was sounding decidedly less happy than she'd ever heard and even if she couldn't understand the words, she could guess a lot from the tone in which they were being uttered. She looked up, to find him wrapping his thumb in his classwork. Oh. Oh dear. She supposed the warning made sense now, given how easily Freddie had cut himself. It would seem logical, in some ways, to try the other spell to fix it - they were learning these two as a pair, after all. She would never have, but she could see how others might have thought it was a good idea.

"Perhaps we should get the professor?" she suggested, when Freddie asked if she had any other ideas - she wasn't sure, but she guessed he meant with regards to his thumb, and that was her most pressing concern even if it wasn't his - so much so that her hand was already making its way tentatively into the air before she had finished speaking.

13 Ellie And more dangerous 1456 Ellie 0 5

Professor Wright

September 06, 2019 1:33 PM

No need to worry. by Professor Wright

Under normal circumstances, Gray wasn't sure he would have kept a particular eye on Ellie Alperton. She was an Aladren, but a well-behaved, quieter one, not the sort to cause a lot of trouble. Other students had much more alarming initial sets of attributes.

However, he knew about Ellie's circumstances, and while he was determined to treat her like any other student, he was aware that there could be issues. So when he heard a burst of German and saw her starting, tentatively, to raise her hand, he headed that way right away, not least because he did not understand the German.

However, the problem was rather more mundane, and he noted this for future reference. An unusual situation was known to the staff, but as far as he could tell, the students did not know about it, and would have no way to do so for some time, he imagined. Therefore, there was only so much need to worry about it, and much more to worry about kids slicing their hands open through mishandling charms.

"I see we've had an accident," he said. "Let me see...."

The cut did not look serious, and so he felt equipped to mend the damage himself without recourse to the medic's office. "This isn't very bad," he said, hopefully soothingly. "Let's patch this up."

He was not overly skilled at Healing magic, but a murmured charm later, and the skin over Freddie's thumb began to close over and smooth again, as though the nick had never happened. "There you are. All right now?" he asked, looking between the two children.

16 Professor Wright No need to worry. 113 Professor Wright 0 5

Freddie Zauberhexen

September 11, 2019 6:58 PM

That was handy! by Freddie Zauberhexen

Freddie was a little disappointed to find that his wound wouldn't scar now, as he thought that every proper grown up had any number of scars from their battles with the world, but he also supposed that it wasn't the same if it was from a magical accident born of incompetence. It would be better if he got it doing something really adventurous. In the end, he grinned up at Professor Wright and nodded, rubbing his thumb with the fingers of the other hand.

"It's perfekt," Freddie said, slipping into the German pronunciation since they were basically the same words anyway.

There were lots of words like that and Freddie wasn't too keen on getting it right one way or the other. He could figure English out, other people could figure German out. It would be fine. Hana had a much harder time than he did with English, and she still got by. Why do it the hard way when you didn't have to? It was like grammar; sometimes it was important and sometimes it was more important to just get the gist across. Unfortunately, that theory didn't seem to apply to coursework, but that was a lesson learned quickly and without much pain.

Once Ellie had had a chance to speak and the professor had walked away, Freddie turned towards his classmate again. "I think I should be the same as you also," he admitted, still grinning. "You were smart to go more slow."

He considered his work again for a moment. "Maybe you try again before me?" he suggested.

22 Freddie Zauberhexen That was handy! 1452 Freddie Zauberhexen 0 5