This is off to a great start on Defense Against the Dark Arts

Professor Nash

November 16, 2017 1:05 PM

Beginner Lesson: Cornish Pixies by Professor Nash

The height of Daniel Nash II’s acting career had been when he was ten years old. His part in the television show had been drastically reduced when he left for Sonora but he’d held onto until the show was cancelled shortly before he graduated. Despite the fifteen or so years since then, Daniel still counted himself a good actor.

He needed every bit of those skills on this Friday afternoon to look like he wanted to be here teaching beginner Defense instead of heading off for his weekend early. Friday afternoons were the worst time to have classes, he thought. This had been true as a college student and it remained true as a Sonora professor. He didn’t even have any specific plans this weekend, he just wanted to Not Be Here anymore after a long week. But he had one more class to get through and that it was Beginners made it even worse.

For one thing, Jasmine was in the beginner class. He liked his niece, he did. He just didn’t like teaching her. Her academic habits were much too like Holly’s - Jasmine’s mom and Daniel’s sister - to be anything but infuriating to an teacher, especially one like Daniel who had once been an Aladren.

For another, beginner lessons were so incredibly tame. Even boggarts didn’t get introduced until Intermediates, that was the earliest of the interesting creatures. No, today was pixies, which were just even more depressing because somebody (and he certainly wasn’t excluding the possibility that it might be Jasmine) was bound to call them cute fairies and then he just might need to pull out his hair and scream. Especially if it was his own niece who said it.

Still he put on a smile of welcome - top acting quality - and greeted the beginners as the clock marked that it was time to begin. He closed the classroom door exactly at 3:15 on the button, as that was the scheduled start time, and he frowned severely at anybody slipping in late after that point, though he wouldn’t start deducting house points for lack of punctuality until 3:17. He was not unfeeling.

“Cornish Pixies,” he stated aloud as he wrote the word on the chalkboard. After a year of teaching here, he was now comfortable with using chalk and didn’t get too much of it on his clothes anymore, though he still personally thought overhead projectors worked better and were more cleanly.

He turned back to face the class. “Who can tell me anything about a pixie?” He picked on a few raised hands until he’d gotten several correct traits from the students. “Yes, they are blue skinned. They can fly despite not having wings. They stand about eight inches tall and are distantly related to doxies and fairies. They have shrill voices that can only be understood by other pixies. They are very strong for their size and, working together, they can lift a human being off the ground by their ears. They are terrible troublemakers, and the best way to capture any pixies causing you mischief is to hit them with a freezing charm and imprison then in cold iron.”

He pulled a sheet off a small iron birdcage he had sitting on his desk, revealing a handful of blue skinned pixies. “They do have a magical beast classification of Triple-X, which is reasonably dangerous for the untrained, though competent witches and wizards shouldn’t have too much trouble with them. I’m going to have you line up and I’ll release the pixies one at a time from their cage. I want each of you to try using a freezing charm to immobilize the loose one when it’s your turn. Professor Wright tells me you should have covered that one already. Any questions?”

Once the questions had been addressed and the students lined up, he let loose the first pixie.

OOC: Hello and welcome to DADA. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves while waiting in line for your turn and/or after you have gone. After a pixie is frozen Daniel will return it to the cage and help let out another one for the next student to freeze. You have permission to have him performing those actions in your post. You can make up some mischief for the pixie to cause before your character gets it, but Daniel won’t let it escape the room. Have fun! Mischief managed!

Subthreads:

This is off to a great start by Cleo James, Crotalus with Professor Nash

That is a strange looking pixie by Gary Harper

Oh! Cute little blue fairies! by Jasmine Delachene

1 Professor Nash Beginner Lesson: Cornish Pixies 130 Professor Nash 1 5

Cleo James, Crotalus

November 16, 2017 2:11 PM

This is off to a great start by Cleo James, Crotalus

Cleo wasn’t a fan of Defence class, and she was pretty sure that Professor Nash wasn’t the biggest fan of having to teach her. In all her wandwork subjects, she had a tendency to accidentally make fire. It had been steadily improving over the course of first year as she learnt how to control herself a bit more, but Defence was the class where her control most often slipped, because there was that element of fear and pressure. Even though she knew that she should be totally safe with the professor there, it was hard not to get just a little bit flustered when people were shooting hexes at you, and when Cleo got flustered she also got fiery.

Cornish Pixies. Cleo hesitated… She knew about gnomes because they were a garden pest, but pixies… she wasn’t quite so sure. They sounded pretty unpleasant, although she was glad that the lesson didn’t involve practising on other people, as that just stressed her out. No one had yet lost their eyebrows to her, but it was a worry that they might.

She twirled her holly wand anxiously as she lined up. The wandmaker had raised her eyebrows when that wand chose her. Got a temper, have we? she’d asked. Cleo had been relieved when the maker had gone on to explain that holly was good for those overcoming anger or impetuousness. She wanted a wand that encouraged her to be a better person, not a worse one.

When Professor Nash opened the cage, Cleo readied her wand. The small blue pixie leapt out, and Cleo briefly wondered how Professor Nash was going to ensure that they only got one - they were quick. It ran along the desk, blowing a raspberry at her.

“Immobulus!” she cast. The blue yet of light that proved she had uttered the incantation correctly issued from her wand. However, the spell was wasted, unless the blackboard had been threatening to go anywhere. She had aimed for where the pixie was which, of course by the time her spell hit, it no longer was.

“Immobulus!” she cast, missing again. “Imm-” she could feel herself getting flustered. She hadn’t been prepared for how fast the pixie was going to be, and she felt she was just wildly slashing, trying to catch it. She could feel the familiar sensations - her palms were sweating, and it was like there was something uncurling in her chest. She stopped herself, trying to give herself time to calm. On the plus side, this meant that she didn’t send a jet of fire across the desk. A degree of self-awareness and self-control she could only hope Professor Nash was able to recognise. However, the hesitation, and her clear weakness gave the pixie the moment it needed. It leapt for her, landing in her hair.

Anyone passing might have been forgiven for thinking that the beginners class had a visiting banshee. Cleo screamed. She had a particular aversion to things getting in her hair - not that it was a common occurrence, but she just overall disliked other people touching her hair, and had always been fussy about how it was brushed. Having a pixie in it, firmly pulling at tiny handfuls, made her panic the way others did about seeing spiders or looking down from heights.

“Get it off, get it off!” she squealed, appealing to Professor Nash or her fellow students - whoever could rid her of it first.

13 Cleo James, Crotalus This is off to a great start 389 Cleo James, Crotalus 0 5

Professor Nash

November 17, 2017 9:43 AM

I disagree by Professor Nash

Daniel missed the first few seconds of Cleo's encounter as he was busy making sure no other pixies got out before he finished closing the door, but he did see her first casting splash across the blackboard. He intentionally prevented an eyebrow from rising as the next few castings missed their mark as well. Then, as pixies are prone to do, the loose one turned on a panicking target.

He didn't immediately interfere. Pixies were only a XXX classification. One by itself wasn't likely to do serious harm. He'd give Ms. James a chance to defend herself, as was the point of this subject.

When she demonstrated a severe lack of doing so, and with his ears still ringing from her shriek, Daniel decided she'd had plenty of opportunity to sort this out for herself. He did have an advantage in that the pixie was relatively still in its pursuit of hair pulling, but he was inclined to believe his ability to aim was just generally better as well. His freezing charm immobilized the small blue creature on the first try and he caught it with a levitation charm before it hit the ground.

He deposited the unmoving pixie back into the cage and closed the door, locking them all inside. The charm would wear off shortly, and then it could take another turn causing havoc. He decided not to push Ms. Jones into trying again immediately because, frankly, he himself needed a bit of time before being exposed to another banshee cry if things went poorly again. Also, it would be for the best to give the pixies times to forget that this girl was an ideal target for hair pulling. "You can take a few minutes to regroup and let everyone else have go. Time permitting, everyone who needs one will get a second chance. Go on to the back of the line. Next."

Once the next student was ready, he opened the cage door and another pixie flew out into the room.

1 Professor Nash I disagree 130 Professor Nash 0 5

Gary Harper

November 19, 2017 10:11 PM

That is a strange looking pixie by Gary Harper

Gary put away his extra-curricular books and notebooks as the other students began to enter the classroom as had become standard practice at this point in his classroom routine. Defense Against the Dark Arts was his best class and his most favorite so far. It was jam packed with all the information an adventuring wizard would find necessary in daily life. He also liked the Professor. Professor Nash seemed to be a little closer to the muggle world that Gary had grown up in than some of the other professors. He could also almost picture the teacher raiding his way through some sort of terrible, world-threatening adventure. None of the threats, as admittedly benign as they may be for beginners, seemed to even phase him.

As Professor Nash began talking, Gary was a little shocked by the subject. Pixies? Many facts about them flashed through his mind; Tiny or small, winged, flying, fey creatures, Anywhere from 2.5' to under a foot in height, tricksters and pranksters but not generally malevolent, innate magical ability for invisibility and various other spell-like abilities, they were generally good aligned. He had learned early to keep these facts to himself when the Professor asked what people knew about them. The actual creatures were usually quite different that those described in the manuals. What were real pixies like? Apparently, if they were learning about them here, they were something more than mischievous pranksters that might reward you if you could take a joke.

The class began calling out attributes, Gary wrote them down. These things sounded almost right, but on the wrong side of the alignment spectrum. After Professor Nash pulled the sheet off the cage, Gary quick doodled a picture of the creatures trapped on the desk. As such, he wound up near the end of the line when he finally joined in. He took careful note as the first few students took their turns, watching what the pixies did and how they moved. They were quick, that freezing charm needs to be fast as well. Hopefully he could pull it off properly, he practiced the wand movements while he waited for his turn.

2 Gary Harper That is a strange looking pixie 1404 Gary Harper 0 5

Jasmine Delachene

November 30, 2017 3:46 PM

Oh! Cute little blue fairies! by Jasmine Delachene

Jasmine had no answers to offer to her uncle’s request for information about Cornish Pixies. They sounded kind of cute, though. Wasn’t Tinkerbelle sometimes called a pixie? She knew better than to mention this though, because Uncle Daniel thought Disney got everything wrong, even if Mom insisted Pocahontas was a perfectly valid historical movie. Daniel’s response to that assertion, though, made her certain nothing from a Disney movie should be brought up in his class.

So she did not mention fairies out loud, but when he pulled the cover off their cage, she squealed a little bit in delight and declared, “Oh! They are like cute little blue fairies!” Sure they didn’t have wings, or wear adorable dresses, but they were near enough!

This opinion took a beating when a loose one started pulling out Cleo’s hair and making the poor girl howl terribly, but Uncle Daniel got it away from her and then it was Jasmine’s turn.

She readied herself, wand in hand, aware now of the trouble they could cause and no longer reluctant to shoot combative magic at the little blue flyer Uncle Daniel was letting free.

It zipped and zoomed about the room, and Jasmine watched it warily, keeping her wand point following its every move, awaiting an opportunity when it slowed down. She’d already seen that casting wildly hadn’t worked for Cleo and didn’t want to face the same consequences.

The cute - but cruel - little blue fairy slowed down, looking like it intended some mischief with one of the lamps. “Immobulus!” Jasmine cast swiftly, flicking her wand out like a flyswatter going for a pesky fly. Living on a horse ranch, she had plenty of practice with swatting flies. Then, just in case, she shot off two more in quick succession.

The first one missed, but it drove the fairy to fly right into the second blast of magic and she went down. Uncle Daniel caught her with a levitation charm and deposited her back into her cage. “Good,” he said, and sounded just a little surprised by her success.

Jasmine beamed happily at him, triumphant in her rare success. “Tricky little fairies, aren’t they?” she asked cheerfully, and his expression grew to its more accustomed expression of hopeless exasperation at her.

“It’s a pixie,” he told her flatly.

“Yeah, whatever,” she told him, with a casual insolence she would not have dared use with any of her other professors, but which couldn’t be helped around Uncle Daniel. She shrugged and headed to the back of the room to join anyone else who was done.

1 Jasmine Delachene Oh! Cute little blue fairies! 1397 Jasmine Delachene 0 5