Professor Daniel Nash
March 03, 2018 10:15 PM
Beginners, on your guard by Professor Daniel Nash
Daniel looked out over the Beginner class sternly. He had several reasons to be concerned. The first was that the rumors of the troublemakers in Intermediates were growing rampant and he'd begun to hear from some of his co-workers there was apparently a copycat prankster in Beginners now. This was not a good class for people to be goofing off in, and he hoped whoever it was understood that.The second concern was sitting in the third row back, wearing a tiara of all things on her head today. He was not looking forward to having his half-sister yell at him later for letting other kids shoot disgusting curses at her baby, but defending yourself from bad things was kind of the definition of the class he was teaching.
And thirdly, there was going to be a lot of nastiness in today's classroom if the second years weren't good at their shielding charms.
"Alright," he began, once the trickle of students into the room eased off and everyone had settled into a seat. "Today we start the dueling unit. As some of you may know, Sonora does have a Dueling club, so if you enjoy this sort of spell casting, check your House bulletin board for the next meeting date and come to join us in the MARS Sports Room. I am the adviser for it, and so you will get to learn additional techniques and spells not covered in the base curriculum, as well as reinforce the ones that are."
He took a breath and paused a moment, allowing a moment for transition as he moved from advertising to teaching. "For today, we will begin very basically." He paused again, this time for the foreign students, as he forced his verbose nature to take a step back and state the plan in a very straightforward manner. "First years will do a simple jinx. Second years will defend."
He pointed his wand at the board and the chalk rose up and began to write: First Years: Nasal Mucus Jinx, colloquially known as "Curse of the Boogers" or "Curse of the Bogeys" The last phrase was only rarely used on this side of the Atlantic, but the Europeans who were taking the class might need to know it in the future by that term, so he included it.
At the same time, he repeated what the chalk was writing aloud. "First years will be casting the Nasal Mucus Jinx. This is a very easy attack spell that causes your target to sneeze once and eject a lot of nasal mucus from their nose. As it simulates a function the human body is perfectly capable of doing on its own, it does not require a lot of magical power to achieve, so your wand motion is nothing more than pointing the tip in the direction of the person you wish to curse. The incantation is," he paused a moment, this time in regret that this was a thing he was required to teach people. Clearly it had been invented as a prank by some precocious teenager who was looking for a laugh. If it had been Latin, or even pseudo Latin, that would be one thing; even something in English like the 'point me' spell would have been fine. But no, Daniel was not that lucky. He sighed, and began the sentence over with deeply harbored resentment and a little bit of embarrassment. "The incantation is 'achoo.'" If it wasn't such an easy curse to master, he was sure it would have never made it onto the curriculum, but it was, and so it was the primer for offensive magic for beginners.
"Second years, you will attempt to protect yourself from being forced to sneeze. In case you are not able to do so," he waved his wand again and send small travel packages of tissues to each desk where a second year was sitting. "There are more at the front if you need them," he added in a tone the strongly implied that he dearly hoped they wouldn't. "Your spell," he continued, as the chalk rose up and added, Second Years: The Shield Charm, Protego to the board beneath the spell for the first years, "is the Shield Charm, also known by its incantation, Protego. This spell creates a magical barrier that can deflect most jinxes and hexes, including the Nasal Mucus Jinx. Protego is actually an intermediate level spell, but if you say the name of the spell you are protecting against, it does become much simpler to cast effectively, so you will be casting 'Protego Achoo' today." He flinched slightly at the verbal indignity of this lesson. "You also just need to point your wand in front of you. The barrier will spread out in front of where the tip is pointing, with that as its center point. I recommend holding it high enough that you know it will protect your nose. As you get older and better at this, the radius will grow and may even cause your opponent to get thrown backwards if they are standing close enough when their hex is repelled. At this level, however, I don't expect anything like that to happen. Still, be sure to have some distance between you as you practice."
"All right, pair off first years with second years. If there is an uneven number, some of you may work in teams of three and take turns. First years, point at your partner and say Achoo. Second years, point your wand in front of you and say Protego Achoo. Begin."
OOC: The Curse of the Bogeys was mentioned in Philosopher's Stone, but no details were given, so I have made them up. The lesser form of Protego is also made up, and builds off the theory that shorter forms of spells are more difficult postulated in Charms. Remember to follow site rules: no writing for other characters, 3rd person past tense, 200 word minimum, pg rating. For those new to the site, remember fuzzy time is in effect and all classes posted take place at different times in your character's life, so you may post at all of them if you wish (though you don't have to). Your House earns house points for your posts in class, though, so it's recommended to at least make it to some. As a rule of thumb, it can usually be assumed that classes posted after other classes take place later in the year if it's not specifically declared otherwise. Any questions, post them on the OOC board or catch me in Chatzy (I've been going by Jozua Sparks lately). Tag Daniel if anything dangerous occurs in your post. He will attempt to defuse it before anyone gets seriously hurt.
Subthreads: This seems like the safest option (tag Nathaniel) by Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw with Nathaniel Mordue, Teppenpaw, Professor Daniel Nash
Here's to childishness. by Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari with Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren
Defenses up! by Gary Harper, Aladren with Michael DiCaprio - Pecari
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Professor Daniel Nash
Beginners, on your guard
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Professor Daniel Nash
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Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari
March 06, 2018 12:00 AM
Here's to childishness. by Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari
Dueling was not, at home, something Tatiana thought she would ever use. She was, after all, a girl, which meant that someday she would be a woman, which meant she would never get to do much of anything interesting enough to end in a duel at all.Over the summer, Mama had gone to some pains to talk a lot about this - not about dueling specifically, or even about Tatiana specifically, but about the duties and obligations of a proper grown-up Russian lady. Tatiana blamed Rodya. Anya was already seventeen, but a young man was a much more significant step toward adulthood. If she married him, Anya would in an instant lose the right to be Anya in private and only a proper grown-up Russian lady in public - as a wife, she would be expected to devote her life to her husband and, later, to their children. The more Mama talked about how love for the family must mean giving up giving up one’s own interests, the more Tatiana had really hoped never to grow up.
This, of course, was impossible, unless she died, which she did not really want to do either. She tried to take what comfort she could in the thought that she did not have to grow up just yet. At Sonora, she might not even ever have to grow up - she could hardly, after all, marry any of the boys here, they were not Russian, so what did it matter if they thought her unladylike? She was pleased, in a way, to hear it was the start of the dueling unit just because it was such an unladylike thing to do, and yet the girls were expected to do it right alongside and as well as the boys.
Pr - oh - oh - tay - go ahchoo, Tatiana sounded out in her head. She was not overly pleased with having to take the passive role - this was something Mama would probably approve of a girl knowing, and plus, she couldn’t say she’d rather have a snotty nose if the choice was between having one and giving one. Still, the idea of performing a spell almost as well as an Intermediate student now, when it wasn’t even midterm, appealed to her, too - she still had bursts of accidental magic from sheer frustration with how hard it was to enunciate some of the incantations, though not so bad as it had been in her first year. Now, though, it was imperative that she get it right, lest she look incompetent in front of one of the first years.
Finding one, she smiled. Diamond stud earrings sparkled in her ears, but she had removed her usual necklaces in anticipation of a vigorous class. “Hello,” she said, her English clearly Russian-accented even on a single word. “I am Tatiana, a second year. You are a first year? You need partner?”
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Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari
Here's to childishness.
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Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari
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Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren
March 12, 2018 10:22 PM
I am not so sure I like this by Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren
Heinrich was undecided on his opinion of Professor Nash. On the one hand, he talked too much and was very very wordy, with many of the things he said going completely past Heinrich's ability to understand them. On the other, he did, usually once or twice a lesson, slow down and speak simply enough to condense the entire lesson (at least so far as Heinrich could tell) into its simplest concisest form. For that, he was grateful, even as he resented all the other high level talking with the big unnecessary words.If nothing else, Heinrich was able to grasp what he was supposed to do most days though, which wasn't something he took for granted anymore. So that was good.
What was bad was the particulars of what he was supposed to be doing today. Oh, dueling itself was fine. He was good at dueling. Or, at least, he would have been, in Germany, where the spells his parents had taught him (illegally) would have actually been taught. He'd been going to Dueling Club anyway, and struggling through the simplest American English jinxes Professor Nash and Mr. Sparks taught the youngest duelists, but he'd been doing all right. Not as good as he would have liked, of course, but not terrible.
Unfortunately, it was none of those jinxes that Nash was leading with. What was the point of going to a teacher's extracurricular club if it didn't give you a leg up on the rest of the class? No, no, no, instead of doing something cool, they were making people sneeze. By saying Achoo.
He was going to school halfway around the world for this?
Grudgingly, he looked about for a second year to partner with, and one found him pretty quickly. Fortunately, she spoke in clear easy sentences that were deeply accented, very similarly to Masha's, but infinitely easier to understand than, say, the American boy who had rattled on at him during Flying Lessons, and used all kinds of English idioms that Heinrich didn't understand.
"I need partner," he agreed, mirroring her sentence structure, though he was quite sure there should at least be an indefinite article in there. English was very forgiving in that respect; their nouns weren't gendered so everything used the same article, except a few who changed the 'a' to an 'an' and that was determined solely by the first letter of the noun, if it was a vowel, it got the N, otherwise it wasn't necessary. It was one of the few rules that English seemed to not have a lot of exceptions to. The definite article was even easier. That was just always 'the' with no exceptions at all, even when it was an accusative object rather than the sentence's subject. It had been kind of a weird thing to wrap his head around when German had so different articles depending on noun gender and usage within the sentence, but once he got that through his skull, he kind of appreciated the sheer simplicity of it. Especially since English seemed to want to complicate everything else.
"I am Heinrich," he introduced himself in return, his own Germanic accent just as heavy as her Russian one, "A first year." As much as he wanted to impress a second year, her imperfect English made him feel more comfortable in his own, so he did not feel compelled to attempt harder sentence structures that he would probably just get wrong anyway. He held up his wand and tilted his head in question. "You ready, Fräulein Tatiana?"
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Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren
I am not so sure I like this
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Heinrich Hexenmeister, Aladren
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