Professor Skies
April 27, 2018 8:20 AM
Beginners - Keep warm by Professor Skies
It was very strange, returning to classes without having actually gone anywhere over the holidays. She hoped the students had managed to have fun with their friends and blow off some steam, enjoy some silly snowball fights and the lack of classes, but she wondered how long it would be before cabin fever set in. Were they going to start squabbling like her daughters had done when cooped inside too much over rainy days when they’d been smaller? She definitely didn’t feel relaxed and rejuvenated. She felt tired and run down.“Good morning class,” she greeted them. “Today, we have a wintry lesson,” the enchanted snow had faded from the paths once Midterm was over, but that didn’t mean the weather was warm yet. In spite of being in Arizona, the climate of Sonora resembled that of Ireland, thanks to some cunning weather charms and homesickness on the part of the founders. And Ireland was cold in January.
“We will be making gloves today. They don’t have to be warm ones, this spell will work to produce any type of glove. First years will start with a cloth bag, second years with a paper one. The spell is chirothecae,” the chalk wrote it out on the board behind her, along with the pronunciation. Kee-ROH-tae-ka. “Roll the r if you can,” she advised, demonstrating the pronunciation again slowly. “You will want to make a punctuated wand movement with a flick on each syllable, plus one additional flick at the end - one for each finger and the thumb,” she demonstrated, “Small, circular wrist motions between each flick,” she advised.
“As usual, you will get a better mark if your gloves are detailed, pretty or otherwise well-designed. Any questions?” she asked, “Ok. You may begin. And if you feel at all ill, please tell me sooner rather than later...”
OOC - posts will be marked on length, relevance, creativity and realism. If your character is having any issues/causing accidental magical damage/dropping down with a fever, please tag me in the subject line.
Subthreads: I don't see the use of gloves like these... by Parker Fitzgerald with Gary Harper
We all lose by Heinrich Hexenmeister with Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus
Setting the bag on fire (oh Pro-fess-sor!) by Tatiana Vorontsova, Pecari with Dorian Montoir, Teppenpaw, Professor Skies
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Professor Skies
Beginners - Keep warm
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Heinrich Hexenmeister
May 08, 2018 4:36 PM
We all lose by Heinrich Hexenmeister
Heinrich wasn’t sure whether he was upset at the Quarantine that had trapped everyone in the school this midterm or relieved that it meant he was spared the choice of staying here anyway or going back to the home of the uncle he barely knew.On the one hand, staying at a school where everyone spoke a foreign language (or rather being at a school where he was the only speaking his foreign language) was rough, and he probably would have gone to Uncle Karl’s house just to hear people speak German again, and he supposed he kind of missed Hilda and Hansel a little, and his siblings at least would be there even if his parents weren’t. Plus staying might have lead to people asking why he wasn’t going home, and even if he had the words to explain he wasn’t sure ‘my parents are in jail’ was really something he wanted to share with anyone here.
On the other hand, he was still a bit angry about getting shipped off to America in the first place, and he was pretty sure hearing German again would wear pretty thin pretty quickly once it set in that he wasn’t home and Uncle Karl wasn’t Mom and Dad, and getting all bad news from the lawyers and probably not even getting to floo his parents nevermind visit them while the trial was still in progress. He doubted, too, that the stress fueled fights that had laid dormant while he was away would stay so once he was in the presence of his uncle and siblings.
Neither option had been very appealing.
But going to Uncle Karl’s was taken off the table. Instead, he got to share the experience of being cut off from his parents and family with everyone in the school instead of facing that by himself. Somehow, it did make it just a little easier knowing nobody else was having a happy reunion with their family either, that the isolation wasn’t unique to him. Which probably made him a bad person, but the shared experience of being stuck here meant he felt a bit more connected to these English speaking strangers than he had expected to after months of barely communicating with anyone.
Even if they did look at him a bit strangely when he wished the people he passed in the hall a good slide on New Year’s Eve.
But now the midterm was over and it was back to classes. After four months of hearing English basically non-stop, he was getting better at listening comprehension. So he mostly followed Professor Skies’ lecture. A few words here and there still lacked any kind of meaning to him, but overall he was getting good at following the gist if not the details of what people said.
Putting together sentences of his own was still a different story altogether, but his understanding of both spoken and written English was improving by leaps and bounds.
Still, midterm connections or not, English was hard and he was grateful that it wasn’t a partners assignment. He set to writing out his transfiguration table (in German) by himself, comparing the cloth bag he’d been given to a pair of nice gardening gloves his mother used when tending to her flower garden. (Which he and his siblings had never been allowed near since most of the flowers in it were poisonous. He briefly considered if maybe the murder charge against his parents wasn’t actually true before loyally dismissing the possibility and reasserting his belief in their innocence.)
He picked up his wand and practiced the movement a few times, but it was almost always the incantation that cause him problems. His German accent just didn’t mesh very well with the mostly Latin words. Granted, he did not actually recall ever seeing either of his parents transfigure a bag into a glove before, but he doubted the incantation would have been ‘chirothecae’ if they had.
The good thing was that English was also a Germanic language, so Latin was fairly foreign to the rest of the class, too. That knowledge made his own difficulty with it marginally more tolerable.
“Kee-ROH-tae-ka,” he said, repeating the sounds as closely as he could recall hearing them. “Kee-ROH-tae-ka,” he said again, and again, until it felt - well, not natural or comfortable, but at least manageable.
Then he put it together with the wand motion and applied his will and memory of the garden glove, and . . . got something of approximately the right color green, with the purple embroidery of the nightshade flower, but the shape was all wrong. The glove was too round and the fingers were much too fat, too short, and all the same size, positioned evenly around the ‘glove’ instead of making four fingers and a thumb.
He sighed heavily and glanced at his neighbor’s progress to see how badly he was doing in comparison. “Wie geht’s?” He questioned before remembering himself, shaking his head in self-irritation at his mistake, and translating to English, “How goes it?” He grimaced at his own work. “Mein ist like ball.” He would have rather said baloon, but he didn’t know the word for that.
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Heinrich Hexenmeister
We all lose
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Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus
July 02, 2018 6:36 PM
That's....cheerful. by Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus
The Quarantine had kind of disappointed Peyton. She missed her parents and siblings-especially Ryan-as well as her niece, nephews and cousins. Plus, she'd missed Marcus and Melanie's wedding. The Crotalus had been quite glad on two points though. First off, that Sophie had been allowed to go home to Ryan and their kids. It had bothered Peyton tremendously that her brother might have to spend the holidays without his wife. The other, more selfish feeling, was that well, Eden was also here under quarantine and therefore she couldn't...be there to replace Peyton for Sally, Jake and Arnold. She still had to worry about that brother taking Ryan's place though.And at least she had Ivy and Vlad, who had included her in the larger celebration with their cousins who were also Ryan's cousin but not hers. She also had Jasmine. It had been nice having her best friend outside her own family around and she'd even been invited to an ice skating party. Though, it had been Vlad who invited her, not his roommate that had been hosting it. So she'd felt a bit uneasy there and had come with brownies that she'd baked as an expression of gratitude for being allowed to be part of the group. After all, Peyton wasn't entirely sure Dorian wanted her or Ivy or Jasmine there since he didn't invite them, so brownies were a nice...gesture. She hoped they'd been appreciated.
And of course, her ice skating was not quite on par with Ivy, Dorian and Tatiana but she seemed to have done better than Ruby had.
The Crotalus had felt slighty bad too. The entire class was included except for two people and while it wasn't her fault, she still felt for them. If it had been everyone but her, she would have been upset.
Added to that was that it was the two Muggleborn boys not included. That didn't...really make them, Dorian in particular, look good. She had considered asking him if she could send them notes inviting them, even though she didn't know them that well either but felt she hadn't had the right to do so. It was okay for Vlad to invite her and Ivy and Tatiana to invite Jasmine because Dorian invited Vlad and Tatiana and said it was okay for them to invite others. In fact, Peyton had wanted to invite Jasmine too, because she didn't want her friend excluded and that had put her in an even more awkward position than asking if she could invite Gary and Parker, because Jasmine was her friend and she didn't really know the two boys that well. So she was glad that Tatiana had while apologizing to the other Crotalus for not doing so.
And she was sure that Dorian hadn't been deliberately excluding two boys he wasn't close to based on their blood status as it was that he hadn't actually invited her, Ivy or Jasmine either. Peyton firmly believed it hadn't been an anti-Muggleborn thing, but a case of him inviting his friends and allowing them to bring their other friends. She just hoped that Gary and Parker didn't take it as Dorian being prejudiced, when she doubted it was personal against them.
If only she had felt comfortable inviting Connor. Then he could have invited Gary at least. Or Gary's roommate could have. If Vlad and Tatiana could have invited others, Peyton assumed Jehan could have too.
How Parker could have been able to join in, she was unsure of. Maybe through Tatiana since they were both Pecaris? Or through Gary since Parker was part of their Dungeons and Dragons club. Peyton wasn't sure what that was but they were connected through it. But then Gary wouldn't have had any more right than she would have to invite someone.
She supposed she could have appealed to Ruby's Teppish-ness to get her to invite their last two classmates, as Ruby had been invited by Dorian and had the same rights as Vlad and Tatiana to invite others but the other girl had seemed preoccupied with trying to skate.
Anyway, it was over now and it was what it was. If they felt bad, it wasn't her fault but she was still sorry about it. Maybe she should hold a get-together with her whole year to make up for it. Well, her year and Ivy and maybe Connor.
Right now though, it was time for Transfiguration and time to forget about party plans-plans she wasn't sure she could even pull off, parties that very well might end up her, Ivy, Vlad, and Jasmine. Oh and possibly Connor. Still, the only thing she felt confident about was providing refreshments.
She turned her attention to Professor Skies. Okay, so they were making gloves and as usual pretty, detailed ones got better points. This sort of bothered Peyton. The other girls in the Beginner class were the very frilly fancy sparkly sort and she really wasn't. Therefore, they were bound to make fancier prettier gloves than she was.The sort that were more Victorian lady type than useful for use in cold weather. Her gloves were sure to be less pretty because she was, well, not sparkly, not frilly. She didn't wear a lot of expensive jewelry the way they did. Not that her family couldn't afford it, but Peyton was generally more down to earth in that way. More understated. Though she often felt like she should start just to fit in, even if it really wasn't her to be dressed up outside of formal occasions, because being different sucked.
Then again, Ivy wasn't a fancy girl, and that tended to make Peyton feel better. Still, Ivy wasn't in her year and right now, they didn't even share classes. She was surrounded by Jasmine, Ruby, and Tatiana as well as Sylvia and Caitlin who were definitely really proper though less over the top with their jewlery than Tatiana was. Peyton herself only wore a necklace that Grandmother O'Malley had given her when they'd visited her father's family in Boston,which was a family heirloom and a charm bracelet that Ryan had given her. Both of these items were on the costly side, the bracelet being real silver but what was more important was their sentimental value. Something that belonged to her ancestors that her grandmother thought she was worthy of having and a gift from her favorite brother. Peyton basically kept all gifts Ryan had given her through out the years with her here at Sonora from the now rather beaten up stuffed koala he'd gotten her as a baby-and that she'd named after him-to this bracelet he'd sent her for the holidays this year.
Now she had to envision something...fancy. Jewels, which the Crotalus was surrounded by all day long, were fancy but that didn't seem very....glove-like. A glove full of gems would be awfully heavy and just generally uncomfortable. Actually wearing gloves at a crowded party would get awfully sweaty.
She imagined, instead, a delicate flower pattern on white gloves. "Chirothecae" . What she ended up with was....an elaborately patterned mitten with a giant sized thumb. Great.
A stream of German reached her ears and Peyton turned to Heinrich. "Um..." She glanced at his product. "A bit like yours." She held her glove up and puzzled at what he said after. Something about the ball? Was he asking her or just asking something about it? "Pardon? I'm sorry, I don't speak German." Peyton explained. She didn't want to be presumptuous.
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Peyton O'Malley, Crotalus
That's....cheerful.
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