Attracting the wrong sort of attention on Defense Against the Dark Arts

Professor Daniel Nash

March 24, 2018 12:10 AM

Intermediates: Revealations by Professor Daniel Nash

Daniel was beginning to suspect there was something very wrong going on at Sonora. Cleo being a half-Veela was . . . well, not insignificant, but a much smaller part of the year's problems than he would have expected it to be at the start of the term. The bigger issue was, well, everybody. At first, he had taken the problems to be one or two trouble-makers, but he didn't think that was the case anymore, and he felt a bit bad in retrospect for how his had treated Nathaniel Mordue, and to a lesser degree, Jozua Sparks. Nathaniel, at least, had probably not meant to cause any harm, and he had retroactively granted ten points to Teppenpaw for minor things that hadn't necessarily warranted House Points, but Daniel wanted to re-balance the scales there. Jozua, on the other hand, had deliberately skipped several classes, and Daniel was going to stand by his decision to hand out detentions for that, even if he was now more willing to believe 'out of control magic' as the reason.

Daniel was willing to believe that reason because he himself had an incident of out of control magic just that morning, and he planned to go talk to Professor Skies or Headmaster Brockert about it, just as soon as he finished his teaching duties for the day. He wasn't quite sure what was causing it all, but he felt the facts simply did not add up to a ring of pranksters. For some reason, people - a lot of people, far more than could be considered normal for trained witches and wizards, even accounting for the hormones of adolescents during a ball year - were having accidental magic outbursts.

After all, Daniel was under no pressure to produce a date for the ball (though doing so wouldn't be a bad thing), and he had started his day with his breakfast cooking itself (probably for the best, really; he often burned his eggs on Mondays). Worse, this wasn't even the first incident. The first one had been over the weekend, when he was visiting Holly. He had initially tried to blame it on Anya or Philippe, as they were children and prone to accidental outbursts, but Anya had been clear on the other side of the property and Philippe had been up in his room reading. Well, that, and there just wasn't really any reason for either of them to turn Holly's television set into a bookcase full of just exactly the sort of research material he'd been hoping to go purchase at Quills and Tomes later that evening and wishing he'd had available to read instead of watching whatever Disney movie Holly had been trying to find before her TV suddenly transformed.

So if Daniel was causing things like that to happen, and he was a fully trained wizard with two masters degrees, he could hardly blame the students of Sonora for being similarly troubled. As the intermediates began to filter in, he looked around, trying to figure out if he could determine ahead of time who might also be afflicted with this curse. (It could very possibly be an actual curse. He could think of several enchantments that would have these kinds of effects. Or it could be a creature, though probably a very small one if he tracked one from Sonora to Holly's house. Or it could be something else entirely. An illness? A potion?)

He'd definitely need to talk to the other staff later and see if they had any ideas about how this might be spreading or if they had any guesses on likely victims beyond Jozua and Nathaniel.

"Hello, class," he greeted them, once they were all seated. None of them had been so kind as to hand him obvious clues about who was a carrier and who wasn't in their treks from doorway to desk. "Today we will be learning about concealing and revealing charms. Third years, you will be working with Aparecium while fifth years can use Celare. Fourth year may choose which they would like to do. Celare is a concealing charm. I want the students attempting that to write a sentence or two on a piece of parchment, cast the spell on it, and once the message is successfully concealed, pass the paper to your partner doing the other spell. They will cast Aparecium to reveal your hidden message." He took a few minutes then to demonstrate each spell. The revealing charm had no particularly complex wand movements, just pointing at the paper, but the more advanced concealment charm did require a bit of smudging motion which was rather tricky to get right because the wand-tip itself wasn't supposed to move, just the hand holding it.

"If there are no questions, get to it. Raise your hand if you need help."

OOC: Concealing charms have no canon incantation or wand motion, so those are made up. Normally I wouldn't feel I need to advice you not to blow up the classroom with such a tame lesson, but these are unusual times. Tag Daniel if you're 'ploding, please, so he can at least attempt to contain the damage.

Subthreads:

Attracting the wrong sort of attention by Cleo James, Crotalus with Winston Pierce, Crotalus

I think I'm a fairly open book [Tag Juniper] by Finn Scott, Teppenpaw with Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw

1 Professor Daniel Nash Intermediates: Revealations 130 Professor Daniel Nash 1 5

Cleo James, Crotalus

March 24, 2018 10:00 PM

Attracting the wrong sort of attention by Cleo James, Crotalus

Cleo was slowly starting to feel better. She wouldn’t have said things were back to normal – she wasn’t really sure that normal existed any more to get back to. But things were going forward. She and Parker were friends again, although she was concerned by his reports of explosions. Still, interacting with humans seemed vaguely more achievable, and not only that but actually desirable too.

Their Care of Magical Creatures class with Professor Philpott had also been a surprising positive. She had been a bit thrown when she walked into class and saw a substitute, not being a fan of surprises and changes right now, and the subject matter had also made her worry. She felt like she was living a lie all the time right now. She was fake, and monstrous and felt that she deserved to be regarded with suspicion. She had been worried that the kneazles were just going to scratch her eyes out before she had even opened her mouth. But they hadn’t. They had judged her as they had done everyone else – by her words and her actions. She wasn’t inherently untrustworthy. She had felt so sure that she was just… all wrong, all bad inside. But the kneazles, with their ability to tell unsavoury types, had rubbed against her fingers and purred, so long as she had been truthful and kind.

And that was what had her in a more sociable mood as she entered Defence Against the Dark Arts. She had been able to believe that she wasn’t a monster for the first time since coming back. Also, it had been nice to be liked. She thought again about how things had been going… Maybe it wasn’t such a terrible idea to try talking to her classmates a bit more. She actually found herself wanting people to like her, to want to be around her. She wasn’t sure whether any of her fellow intermediates had noticed her withdrawing into herself, and that in itself was sort of depressing. She didn’t want to become literally invisible – especially as that was, apparently, going around at the moment. The incident in Herbology had been so bizarre that it had only added to her conviction that there was something odd going on right now that really was nothing to do with her.

She therefore wasn’t terrified when Professor Nash set them pair work for the day. She was actually sort of pleased. The spell itself sounded fun too. She couldn’t wait until Parker was old enough to do it too, and they could send each other secret notes. Well, not so secret if anyone older than third year could crack them, but it was the fun of it that really mattered. It wasn’t like she and Parker had a lot of secret things to tell each other. Well… she had one big one, but she wasn’t likely to just scribble it in a note. She still had to work that one out… But right now she wasn’t going down that mental rabbit hole again. She was going to be bright, and sparkly and nice, so that someone would want her as a partner.

And, unbeknownst to her, starting to want that kind of thing was leading to her giving off some very dangerous signals. And before she’d needed to brave going up to someone, someone was coming up to her…

OOC – yup, she’s veela-ing at the room at large. Probably not strongly enough to affect everyone, but anyone sitting near to her is going to suddenly be very interested.

13 Cleo James, Crotalus Attracting the wrong sort of attention 389 Cleo James, Crotalus 0 5

Finn Scott, Teppenpaw

March 27, 2018 4:30 PM

I think I'm a fairly open book [Tag Juniper] by Finn Scott, Teppenpaw

Finn was in fifth year now, 15 going on 16, which was a very exciting fact. According to him, that was – his mother liked to jokingly say that it just made her feel old. Finn being older meant that, as ever, he was getting more involved in the family business. His father and grandfather were both advocates of the idea of gradually involving him, rather than overloading him at a young age, or suddenly expecting him to be able to fully participate the moment he became of age. Finn was happy with this, enjoying getting involved with family matters but also still appreciating having some freedom when at home. He also enjoyed the balls that he now got to attend more frequently, although that wasn’t as possible at school. Except for this year – Finn was looking forward to the midsummer ball!

It was also great to finally be one of the older ones in his class again, instead of always having inferior knowledge. Of course, he knew that everyone had experienced being a younger year in a class, but there was something reassuring in not being at a disadvantage.

Finn found the Defense Against the Dark Arts lessons to be a mixed bag. He wasn’t so gone on the more duelling-style lessons, although he acknowledged that they could be useful. Today’s lesson, however, sounded like it was going to be fun, something more along the lines of the games he’d played with his cousins as a child. He didn’t play games anymore, of course, but he was still excited to try out the task.

Professor Nash hadn’t specified who they had to pair up with, so Finn turned to find Juniper. He liked working with her, and this wasn’t a duelling lesson, so he didn’t have to be torn between wanting to not duel her, and wanting to protect her from other, rougher, students. This was a lesson she’d probably be quite good at, if her transfiguration skills went so far as to helping out other subjects (did this count as transfiguration? Finn decided his brain wasn’t made for analysing that question), and it would be nice to spend some more time with her.

“Would you like to work with me?” he asked Juniper, not really expecting her to turn him down, but not wanting to assume.

OOC: Finally got round to tagging Juniper, sorry!

9 Finn Scott, Teppenpaw I think I'm a fairly open book [Tag Juniper] 347 Finn Scott, Teppenpaw 0 5

Winston Pierce, Crotalus

April 03, 2018 10:03 PM

I am a bad person. A very bad person. by Winston Pierce, Crotalus

Defense Against the Dark Arts was not Winston's favorite class - Professor Nash was remarkably talented at making them over-analyze all the fun out of it - but he would grant that he learned the material well and it was one of the classes that he earned a solid O in regularly. As such, as he listened to the day's instructions, he figured he'd probably stretch himself and try the fifth year exercise rather than the third year one. At his desk, he practiced the odd little wand motion a few times before looking around him for an appropriate partner.

Ordinarily, blood status would have dictated that Cleo James was not an ideal candidate, but today something about her just made him want to ignore such dictates. He found himself on his feet before he had consciously decided to approach her. As he drew closer, he noticed the pretty way the classroom lights reflected off her lovely hair. "Hi," he said, and kicked himself for the informality. Bad enough he was talking to her at all. Where were his manners? "That is, would you care to be my partner today, Miss James?"

"You look much happier today than you have been," he noted, not realizing he had noticed this at all until he said it, but it was true. She was smiling and it transformed her into a radiant beauty. His eyes drifted below the smile and he quickly corrected the gaze to a latitude of much greater propriety. He was a bad person for looking at all. She wasn't even of the right social class for him to have that sort of interest in her, no matter how pretty.

And she was pretty. So very pretty. Pity about that class thing. She would look glorious in a ball gown.

She did look glorious in a ball gown. He blinked and stumbled back a step, confused by the sudden transformation of Cleo's school robes. "Erm, you may be a tad overdressed for the lesson, however," he remarked. "Not that you aren't beautiful like that," he added hastily, because it would never do not to compliment a woman in a ball gown, "because you really are."

1 Winston Pierce, Crotalus I am a bad person. A very bad person. 370 Winston Pierce, Crotalus 0 5

Cleo

April 04, 2018 10:11 AM

Defences up! by Cleo

Cleo blinked slightly in surprise when Winston Pierce approached her, and asked to be her partner. She was pretty sure he’d never said as much as two words to her before, outside perhaps of some functional requests ‘excuse me, please’ or ‘could you pass the salt’ - that kind of thing. She knew Winston was that sort that thought parentage mattered and, given that until recently she’d been missing fifty percent of hers, and the other half was Muggleborn, she had been far beneath his notice. That should have been her first clue that something was wrong. But it merely registered as strange, not necessarily threatening. It seemed not even to register as the former with the elf at the back of the room who, whilst they had been told to look out for ‘unusual’ or ‘inappropriate’ behaviour towards Cleo were perhaps not well versed in the social nuances of the classroom, and although they watched attentively, did not seem to feel the need to intervene for someone merely speaking to her.

Her guard went up a little when he mentioned how unhappy she’d looked lately because that was personal and she had no desire whatsoever to get that personal with anybody, much less him. Still.. He seemed to just be making polite small talk. Small talk that was making her uncomfortable, sure… That was making her revise her desire to be around other people… Perhaps. She noticed the way his eyes wandered over her body and she definitely didn’t like that. This wasn’t going well…

And then, suddenly, she was wearing a ballgown. Cleo did not spare many thoughts for how it really was an exquisite garment, and probably far more luxurious than anything she would ever really own - it had a well-fitted bodice of fine lacy flowers and flowing champagne skirts in a fabric that seemed almost lighter than air, and which were rippling gently in spite of the lack of any actual breeze - she was too busy being concerned that she was wearing a ballgown in class and as if that wasn’t odd and uncomfortable enough just for the fact it didn’t belong it meant that all kinds of parts of her that had previously been safely wrapped in her robes were now on show. The thin straps and sweetheart neckline… Cleo pretty much always wore t-shirts. She wasn’t used to so much of her body being on display.

And he was calling her beautiful. The ballgown was inexplicable, but that was unmistakable, because there was no way Winston Pierce would ever pay her a compliment. Unless he was enchanted. She didn’t want this. She didn’t want any of it. She didn’t want his attention, she didn’t want to be able to do that to people, and she didn’t want to be on display to everyone in a stupid ballgown! The effects Winston was feeling probably came to an abrupt end as Cleo’s barriers went back up…. Quite literally. Before the elf or Professor Nash could react, a brick wall sprang up first between her and Winston, but quickly encircled her, shutting her off from any further approaches or unwanted stares.

Cleo took a deep, steadying breath, staring down at the dress. She was like a princess in a fairy story, trapped in a tower. Only she would be quite happy to remain here.

13 Cleo Defences up! 389 Cleo 0 5

Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw

April 14, 2018 8:12 PM

I try not to be by Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw

Like probably many girls at Sonora, Juniper had the ball on her mind. However, it was probably in somewhat of a different context because she felt....not exactly ambivalent but definitely two ways about it. The Teppenpaw generally hated social events, she felt awkward and out of place, even more so than usual. To her, they were a terrifying prospect. She was always worried about doing and saying the right thing and how she looked.

Of course, a school ball wasn't quite the same as a society ball, but still, she was really anxious about being in a room with the entire school at once. Juniper didn't even like being in class because of all the other people, so a ball was even worse. And if she messed up at a ball, she'd still have to see people day in and day out until she graduated. Not to mention there'd be harsh words from Mother.

On the other hand, she...still wanted Finn to ask her badly. In fact, if she didn't go with Finn, she didn't want to go at all.

And the idea that he might want to go with someone else kind of made Juniper want to throw up. She had to admit that she'd be utterly devasted and heart broken if that happened. But why would he want to go with her out of all the girls at Sonora? True, Finn had asked her last time but...well, it seemed Finn had gotten more comfortable here and she hadn't. She couldn't help but worried that he'd be embarassed to be seen with her.

At least, though, Defense today wasn't going to add to Juniper's anxiety. Unlike dueling where she was terrified that someone was going to deliberately throw hexes that went beyond what was required just to pick on her, the concealing charm put her in no real danger.

Except the whole partner thing. Fortunately, the one and only person she really wanted to work with approached her. "Of course!" Juniper replied. She always loved spending time with Finn.

OOC-It's okay, I've not been the best about posting lately myself. Sorry it took me awhile to reply.

11 Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw I try not to be 345 Juniper Brockert, Teppenpaw 0 5