Professor Pye
September 25, 2015 7:16 PM
Beginner's Defense (Years I & II) by Professor Pye
After volunteering to lead the beginner’s concert group and interacting with several of the beginner students in an outside of the classroom environment, Alfie was hit with the sudden realization that the students in his last class of the day were (for the most part) still young innocents. It was a sobering realization for the young professor who really only had Barnaby as a reference for the younger students and Alfie had known for quite some time that his younger brother was anything but normal. Before he had come to this conclusion he had been able to easily teach, putting their youthfulness out of his head as he dealt with them the way he might deal with rookies in the field. However now that he knew he had eleven and twelve year olds in his class whose biggest concern in life was the school concert and the fashion show they were putting on for it, Alfie didn’t really know how he was supposed to act. He was at a loss for words and in what was probably the first time since he taught his first class at Sonora back when he had been a substitute, he stood in front of his beginner’s class and stared at them.“Today,” he said, clearing his throat, worried that the gruff, clipped accent would scare the children—a worry that had never crossed his mind once before. “Today we will be starting our study on gytrashes. While those of you in the classroom from the er England and Scotland area may be familiar with it, as the gytrash is native to that um area. The gytrash, also known as the shagfoal in some parts, is an uh large, ghost like animal. From dog to mule to horse form the gytrash hunts in packs from as little as two to as many as six members. Though white and silvery in apparition, the gytrash has a talent for blending into the darkness.”
As he talked, he flicked several pictures through the magic-run projector showing the students illustrations of events and wizarding photos featuring vague gytrash type shapes. As his eyes flicked over the students, he noticed the bright blue eyes of his little brother. Barnaby was sitting straighter in his chair than usual, thrusting his face forward as though he had gotten a nose piercing and wanted to show it off—or perhaps an eyebrow piercing, Alfie mused thinking back to one drunken night the summer after his sixth year. The difference was, there was nothing off about Barnaby’s face. Alfie had scrutinized it heavily over the past few days since it was a move he noticed Barnaby only ever did when Alfie was around. He had tried to ask his little brother if he was okay but each time Barnaby smirked at him in a taunting way and refused to answer any questions and Alfie was worried.
Barnaby had started behaving like that in the days following their big fight in his office one night—the night before the secret about Jax Donovan came out, actually. Barnaby had stormed out after slamming his hand against a file cabinet in frustration after Alfie assured him he did not know the full gravity of the situation at home and to be careful around Tarquin. And then the secret came out and Alfie was putting two and two together. Barnaby had figured it out, and he was hinting to Alfie that he would Tell if Alfie didn’t do something for him because a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher is supposed to protect children from werewolves not encourage them to befriend one, and while Alfie didn’t particularly mind the idea of leaving his job, it appeared that this position was the only one he could get similar to his original field of study. Any other job his father had gotten to first and Alfie was just about at his wit’s end trying to make that one last connection which would put the whole thing together for him.
However, he didn’t have time to worry about Barnaby blackmailing him or getting invisible eyebrow piercings, and he didn’t have to worry about Father nor all the things that came with that. He had a whole class full of students that he didn’t know how to behave around anymore because contrary to previous belief, eleven and twelve year olds were not miniature adults like he had thought. They were these little, tiny things, with developing personalities and uncontrollable emotions and suddenly everything was rushing back to Alfie and he understood what it was like to be eleven or twelve years old again and he could smell that freshly starched, brand new uniform smell and if he closed his eyes just so he could hear the excitement of young hearts as they started seven monumentally important years, making lifelong (or at least seemingly lifelong because Merlin knew he barely talked to anyone from school anymore) friendships and performed spells many of them had only encountered in their wildest dreams.
And here he was, teaching them about the gytrash who liked to stalk prey in the night, blending into the shadows, attacking and retreating and attacking again. He was telling them about how only three bites from this creature of the night could kill someone their very age and he was accompanying all this with pictures. He supposed the silver lining in this all was that they were in North America whereas gytrashes were native to the England and Scotland areas. He shook his head. What was this world coming to?
“I would like you to pair up into groups of two to three, I don’t care how many of each group there are but no one is to be working alone,” he had already explained the whole Auror-partner deal to them, explaining that to work alone in a situation dealing with dark arts was never a smart idea. “Tomorrow we will have class in the mirage chamber to work on the spells to deflect a gytrash, but today we will be working on identifying a gytrash from just a regular, harmless ghost of an animal. I will hand out folders with case files and photos of gytrash encounters and you will have to work together to decide if the case study you are assigned was a real gytrash sighting or not.”
As the students grouped up, Alfie walked around handing a folder to each group. Each folder contained three case stories along with several pictures to go along with them. The stories included interviews, detective reports, and newspaper articles about the situation. “Just choose one to begin with. If you finish early you can move on to another story but I really am just looking for one completed report.”
OOC: Feel free to make up the stories in your folder. If you want more information you can look at the gytrash page on the Harry Potter wikia but since most of that info came from the video game I also used the wikipedia and various folklore pages for information. The internet is your oyster so long as it doesn’t contradict anything Alfie told them since he wouldn’t give them false information. You know the rules, 200 words minimum, creative yet realistic posts, and no god-modding! Have fun!
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Beginner's Defense (Years I & II)
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