Checking (Prof Wright) on Aladren Commons

Ellie Alperton

May 20, 2020 5:42 PM

Checking (Prof Wright) by Ellie Alperton

Ellie waited nervously as the first years got their introductory talk. She tried not to feel impatient. She remembered it seeming new and useful at the time, although she was now unconvinced how much hadn't been mentioned already or wouldn't be obvious by itself.

At the same time, she was perfectly happy for the speech to go on forever. She was here, preparing to do the right thing, and that meant she was a good person who was in the right. That was a lot easier than facing the actual moment when she had to do it.

But - both eventually and all too soon - Professor Wright got done with his speech and went towards his office. Ellie followed, the door not quite swinging closed behind him before she had knocked on it.

"Hello," she said, stepping in when invited and allowing it to close behind her. "Do you...know about the summer?" she asked, deciding not to specifically find out the source of that informatiom if he did.

"I went to see Mr. Row when I got in," she added, keen to underline that she had done her best to be mature and responsible. She decided to leave out the part where, in her head if house's absence, Mr. Row had become the adult she spoke to by virtue of picking up the complete falling apart mess that had been her from the hall. "And he said that it was probably okay, seeing as it was an accident, but that I would have to check with whoever got the letter - which would be you or Professor Skies," she explained. Admittedly, Mr. Row had put his money on Professor Skies but Professor Wright was available now. If she had to keave this until tomorrow, she was not going to sleep well. He was also a little less scary. Plus Mr. Row had thought he would be a good person to talk to about academic theories and genetics and everything else.

13 Ellie Alperton Checking (Prof Wright) 1456 1 5

Grayson Wright

May 21, 2020 12:41 PM

Yes, I am as well. by Grayson Wright

Knocks on the door were not entirely an unknown phenomenon, but knocks on the door before it quite closed were unusual. When he saw the student responsible for the knock, however, all surprise faded at once.

"Ellie," he said mildly. "Good evening. Do come in."

He had meant to speak to Ellie tomorrow, but since she was here, he might as well get this done with now. He was tired, but not too tired to address the issue, which he could see why she would want to get out of the way at once. It had to be addressed, after all.

He listened to what she said about the incident, and her discussion with Killian Row - which also, he realized, might explain why she wanted to talk right now, despite the lateness of the hour. He had been speaking with Killian at the Feast, and she might have assumed that she was the topic of conversation...that would have been nerve-wracking for most adults, never mind third years. As she finished, he nodded.

"Professor Skies told me," he said. "It's unfortunate. I'm sorry it happened, but accidents, accidents happen to everyone sometime, one kind or another - but that doesn't usually make it any better when it happens to you, does it?" He peered at her through his glasses. "Is control with your powers something you have a problem with...often? Or in general? It's nothing to be ashamed of if you do, and it's something that can be improved. I've worked with other students with that problem before," he said. The idea of punishment for the incident being an option didn't even occur to him; remembering being thirteen, the event of being visited by a government official to determine if an accident had occurred would have been more than enough punishment for something that, to his mind, didn't deserve punishment at all, as it had been entirely involuntary on her part.

16 Grayson Wright Yes, I am as well. 113 0 5

Ellie Alperton

May 21, 2020 7:48 PM

Do I pass? by Ellie Alperton

Professor Skies knew, but she had told Professor Wright. Whilst everyone knowing wasn’t the greatest thing to ever happen, at least it meant she could talk to him about the incident. He was using words like ‘unfortunate’ and ‘accident’ which at least seemed to mean that he accepted that it had been just that. She wondered how much he knew - how much detail had been in the report and how much Professor Skies had passed on. Mostly though, he didn’t seem mad, and that was a good thing. It was sort of hard to imagine him being mad, but then it was hard imagining herself being in trouble, and yet here she was.

“No sir?” Ellie replied in a very small voice when Professor Wright said tacked a ‘does it?’ on the end of his statement about it happening to others and that not making it feel better. She would have assumed that to be a rhetorical question but he was staring at her rather intently. She actually did feel a little better knowing it happened to people other than her but it seemed like ‘no’ was the expected answer, if any answer at all was expected.

“I… I don’t think so?” she asked when he asked if she had general problems with her magical control. She was not really sure that she was qualified to answer that question, having known about magic for all of two years. That was why she was at school, to learn control, and surely they could tell if she was doing it right or not. “I mean, my grades are good, I think, aren’t they?” she asked anxiously. It had taken a while to get used to not seeing ‘A’s as a good thing but she thought she’d got a handle on the letters. She thought the good ones had been on her class reports. Had she misremembered? Had she let As slip by, accidentally attaching their old meaning?

“Should I… should I know that kind of thing? How much control is normal? And… and is there a way to tell apart from my grades?” she asked.

13 Ellie Alperton Do I pass? 1456 0 5

Grayson Wright

May 21, 2020 9:38 PM

Yes. by Grayson Wright

Once again, Gray was surprised by the idea of not knowing, instinctively, if one was in control of what was happening or not, but with both Evelyn and now Ellie as evidence, he had to accept that it was not that way for everyone. Including, possibly, those who could have most benefited from the information.

"Your grades are fine," he assured her, thinking back to the marks of the past year as best he could remember them off the top of his head. He would have struggled to provide her with an abundance of detail, but he generally retained an idea of how each student had performed the year before and did so especially clearly with members of his own House. He tried not to hold significantly higher expectations for the Aladrens than he did for other students, for both the sake of the Aladrens and the other students, but he couldn't quite help being particularly pleased when he noticed good results from Aladrens, just as a general category. "Good enough that you clearly have some level of control. There are other possibilities, though."

He considered exactly how to say it for a moment. "I won't bore you with a lot of theory unless you're interested," he began, "but one theory of how a section of humanity happened to develop magical powers says that it was advantageous to us - that the first spells were accidental, all driven by what our distant ancestors wanted or needed. Sometimes accidental magic occurs at random - explosions and such, lashing out at, well, random - but often, and this is where the theory comes from, it will solve a problem that's happening right then - or the witch or wizard does, I suppose, instinctively." It was easy to talk about magic, he thought sometimes, as though it were a little bit alive in its own right, and he was not entirely sure that wasn't the case, but that was more a matter for Defense Against the Dark Arts and Divination than it was for his field. "Even once you have full control of your powers, as an adult - and no-one expects that from you right now - " he added kindly but firmly - "there are many spells you'll find you work more effectively when you're having this feeling or that one. There are some spells that can only be worked if you can bring yourself to feel a certain thing when you try to use them, but it's still, still an issue with other spells too, sometimes. I think - and this is just me, er, not any authorities - that we in Aladren, and the Pecaris, may share some common ground when it comes to our...internal states affecting what we do. Of course, no student in any House is likely to fit every trait associated with that House, but we are known here for being...driven. Determined. Having strong feelings about reaching a goal, and magic can be a means to an end - especially if your will is better-developed than your degree of control, or one kind of control. Some people have trouble producing magic - others have trouble not doing so subconsciously -

"That's probably more theory than was necessary," he concluded, realizing this, and that he was probably dangerously close to rambling, if not already past the border of that country. "As far as practical, practical evidence goes - basically, watching yourself, seeing if things happen when you don't mean them to - or too many convenient coincidences that solve a problem. I'm not saying you do have a problem to address, though - whatever happened this summer could be an isolated incident. I just thought I should ask, so that if you are - or were - struggling with anything, something more than an isolated incident, we could address it sooner rather than later," he explained. "I was going to speak to you about it tomorrow, actually, but you beat me to it," he added with a slight smile.

16 Grayson Wright Yes. 113 0 5

Ellie Alperton

May 24, 2020 6:54 AM

Okay, let's talk hormones by Ellie Alperton

”Fine like... okay, or fine like good?" Ellie clarified when Professor Wright threw out the bland, less than comforting adjective. "I always got good grades at my last school," she clarified, in case the grades hadn't translated well, or in case... Did they expect less of her for being a Muggleborn? She had been told it wouldn't matter and that others wouldn't be much further ahead than her, at least with practical magic. But she was aware that there could be a surface level of tolerance, with lip service to the right ideals which tried to gloss over the deeper issues. "I want to keep doing well," she stated, even though she had hoped that would be obvious.

Professor Wright then gave a lengthy and much more informative speech than Mr. Row had done, and Ellie listened curiously, especially as he mentioned evolution. If this was being boring, he was welcome to bore her to death...

"No, it was really interesting, thank you," she said earnestly as he stated that might have been more detail than necessary. "So... people with different temperaments might have more difficulty with some things? But maybe more ease with these emotion driven spells?" she summarised. She was not sure she wanted to be thought of as 'highly emotional' but 'driven' and 'empathetic' were both acceptable to her.

"I don't think I've seen that pattern, but I will keep an eye on it," she promised, when he asked if she had had any other incidents. She was not quite sure how to judge what was 'too convenient.' She had made friends easily, had a date, found a nice dress for the ball... All those struck her as incredible but she wasn't sure they fell into the category of magically manipulating the universe. They involved other people's free will, which she didn't think she could control. She also hadn't known Jasmine was Jasmine or that she herself really wanted a date with Freddie. Both of those things had just sort of happened to her, and then been nice. And the store clerk hadn't seemed confused or not recognised the dress, so had presumably ordered it weeks before Ellie's arrival.

"Speaking of ongoing.... situations though, I did want to ask some more questions about magical control, if that's alright?" she checked. She noticed that he had said he had planned to have this conversation tomorrow, and she was aware it was getting late. She had wanted to know whether she was in trouble, and that seemed to be answered, and even though the rest of her worries about control were also going to play on her mind, she also suspected Professor Wright might not really be able to answer. Still, when he didn't shoo her off to bed and insist that it waited, she dived into her other thoughts.

"Professor Row compared magical development to exercising your muscles and making them stronger. And I understand that is just an analogy but it got me thinking... Or, it added to some thinking I had already been doing," she clarified, "Actually, physical exercise isn't really effective at building muscle mass until after puberty," she stated bluntly. Puberty, whilst a terrifying concept, was not a terrifying word, or not one she had any embarrassment about saying to an adult. She had had to get used to that being a perfectly reasonable discussion, and one that usually involved her parents too, so she had learned not to squirm over it. She wondered whether the same was going to be true of the bespectacled Professor in front of her. But, well, he had signed up for pastoral responsibility for a bunch of teenagers, so he would probably have to learn to deal with the word 'puberty' if he hadn't already. "The ability to develop muscle mass is affected by hormones. Obviously it’s possible to develop magical control before those kick in, because you start training us when we’re eleven, so it’s not totally affected by the same mechanics. But there’s a bunch of other changes that go on, like with your brain becoming more stable and more able to make less impulse-based decisions, and… well, obviously that’s a process, and most teenagers go through a phase of struggling with that, but ultimately there’s a stabilising effect on your ability to think. So, is there a typical trajectory of how puberty affects magic development?” she asked. “Seeing as I’m not going to have one until I get the medication for it,” she added, in case Professor Wright went off down the wrong track of assuming she thought hormones were responsible for her outburst. It was, in fact, the opposite. She kept thinking back to the injection she’d had just days before her incident with Seth - was her lack of them going to lead to magical immaturity?

“I doubt many people like me have been studied,” she clarified, making sure she didn’t expect him to be some kind of expert on transgender magical development. She wondered whether there was such a thing, and made a note to access it if at all possible. “But if there’s information I can theorise from, that’s a start.”

13 Ellie Alperton Okay, let's talk hormones 1456 0 5

Grayson Wright

May 24, 2020 10:01 PM

What could possibly go wrong? by Grayson Wright

"Fine as in good," said Gray, unable to suppress a slight smile at the desire to clarify what had admittedly been a vague statement about an issue which an Aladren could be reasonably predicted to care about quite a bit. Caring about one's grades wasn't necessarily the same thing as loving to learn - there was the type who'd follow his or her own interests to the gates of Hell and back, but couldn't be bothered to put much effort into assignments they found boring - but the two did often occur in the same people. "I apologize for the imprecise answer."

It was also not entirely surprising to find an Aladren following the points of a theory speech, however poorly the presenter might have presented them, and he nodded as Ellie summarized what he had just said. "Excellent summary," he said approvingly. "All of us have, to some extent, a unique style of magic. People from the same family, or with the same wand wood, or who had the same teachers may resemble each other more than they do other people, but no two witches or wizards seem to relate to magic exactly the same way."

He nodded when she asked if she could ask more questions about magical control, expecting something fairly mundane. He nodded again here and there as she explained Killian's metaphor and various ways biology interacted with consciousness, all without blinking despite the allusion to the existence of puberty. It was only when Ellie reminded him that she wouldn't have puberty without some kind of (he was reasonably sure) Muggle medication that he experienced a flash of surprise.

It was odd, he thought. The child's identity (he thought, from the reading he'd done after she'd been Sorted into Aladren, that this was the proper term) had required the school to make accommodations. It was not a secret, at least from the staff. However, it was remarkably easy to sort of...forget, in conversation, at least for him. He didn't know if this had something to do with his finding the content of a conversation something he was more likely to think about than the personal details of the person he was talking to (something which had led him into social blunders more than once in the past decade or two), or if it was just that everything about Ellie seemed to tick the boxes his brain associated with girls, but there it was. And that made this discussion take far more of a speculative turn than he had expected it to.

"I can't say for sure that there aren't studies about situations like yours, but I also can't say that I know of any myself," he said apologetically. "Speaking about the issue generally, though...one reason we begin magical instruction at eleven is because it's helpful to gain some control before puberty - some teenagers, even after they start getting a grasp on things, will have some trouble with control again on and off due to all the hormones and changes. For most people, though, once you start using magic deliberately, accidental magic usually starts to become less and less common on its own, except for the occasional setback in your teens, when you may be having strong but uncontrolled feelings. Or when you may struggle with coordination during growth spurts - spellcasting is partly physical, with wand movements.

"On the whole, though, you're on the right track with what you said about thinking processes - as the memory and attention span grow longer, and the body grows stronger, most of us see an increase in control and the...scale of spell one is capable of. Though there are variables and disagreements there - some theorists think any of us could hypothetically perform any spell, under the right conditions, while others think magical ability exists along a continuum - and while some of those who are dedicated to the cult of - pure blood - " his expression involuntarily twitched with obvious distaste; they were not categorically opposed to his ongoing existence or participation (to some degree) in society, but they did generally oppose extending the same courtesies to his mother and he (like most people, he thought irritably, who were even vaguely right in the head) thought he would have had a natural disinclination toward political positions which so regarded his mother even had he not been bright enough to recognize the argument as bad - "will try to use that theory to support their unsubstantiated ones, it doesn't actually imply that at all - the research seems pretty conclusive that there's no way to predict a child's magical proficiency through the number of wizards in his or her family tree." It was undeniable that particularly magically accomplished parents often had similarly powerfully magical children, but it was not a given even for them, and the data simply didn't support the assertion that the number of non-magical ancestors corresponded with a lack of proficiency. If anything, it slightly suggested having a few Muggle ancestors within three or four generations, anyway, might be conductive to greater proficiency - but that was getting far beyond the scope of their question, he realized.

"Though that is another question besides the one you were asking," he corrected himself again. "Where was I...oh, variables. Well, I do not know enough about wandlore to get very far off-topic here, but it's known that an individual's wand also contributes to these things. We and our wands are supposed to grow together over the years - your wand will keep the same dimensions it had when you bought it, of course, while you will not, but besides reacting to people suitable for them, wands also...learn, for lack of a better word. They have a memory of the spells performed with them and can accumulate power. Some wand combinations seem to magnify the effects of spells more than others, or to do so more in one subject area than others - this one is better for Charms than Transfiguration, or that one is better for a duelist than a Healer. So - to answer your question as best I can - there are general trends, but it's a complex subject with a lot of variables in play with everyone. Based on your performance so far, though, I don't think you need to worry now, though," he concluded, wondering why he hadn't just said his last two sentences and none of the others which had preceded them.

16 Grayson Wright What could possibly go wrong? 113 0 5

Ellie Alperton

June 03, 2020 7:04 AM

Everything by Ellie Alperton

“May I have a pen and paper? Or… equivalent,” Ellie asked, as Professor Wright gave a lot of rather interesting information that she felt it might be prudent to keep track of. She had been getting accustomed to writing with a quill, as it seemed to be the go to in this world, and it seemed like there might be occasions when she visited magicky places where it was the only thing they had on offer. Like… at the bank or whatever. She tried to remember if she’d seen quills there when they went for filling out the forms, but her dad was the kind of person who always had a pen on him, and anyway changing money didn’t require much paperwork on their part. She imagined utilitarian grey feathers, chained by their ends to the desk, though probably there was some invisible anti-theft charm to make that particularly weird mash up of cultures unnecessary…

She personally favoured pens still, both because they were faster and neater for her and because they could come with Disney princesses on them and thus match the notebooks she generally used. However, she did have several fluffy pink quills that made her feel like an old-fashioned heroine. So, if Professor Wright only had quills, she would be able to make adequately neat and efficient notes. She just tended to still say ‘pen and paper’ as a catch all term because it rolled off the tongue far more easily.

Once equipped, she jotted down notes on what he had said, weighing up what he had said about the different factors. She thought she might have to organise them a bit more later… Things that were in her control versus things that were not. And add to the research.

“So… effectively there is just a certain amount of magic that I either have or don’t have. And I can always improve my magic by practising more because that builds my wand’s… learning. And that’s less likely to be tied to physical factors than something like strength or control. And those are things that are affected by puberty - they may become destabilised but the overall capacity grows - but that isn’t the only factor. Those things can still improve regardless,” she summarised. “But we should probably also keep an eye on me just in case?” she added anxiously. It sounded like Professor Wright was saying there were arguments for and against the assumption that she’d be just fine, and she also had a hard time believing it’d all just work out. “And maybe do some more research,” this was added more to herself than to him. “I’d like to know sooner rather than later if my grades are… tailing off or plateauing or anything.” Unless they were plateauing at a solid O on everything, which she hoped was achievable.

13 Ellie Alperton Everything 1456 0 5

Grayson Wright

June 03, 2020 1:41 PM

...well, yes, but we can hope for the best. by Grayson Wright

The child wanted to take notes? Yes, this one had been correctly Sorted, he thought. "Oh - yes, of course," he said, and waved his wand to summon a writing board with a thick, partially hollow top section, which allowed an ink bottle to be placed in it while the writer bore down on the flat expanse below. He offered her this along with a small bottle of blue ink, a sturdy quill from the third feather of a goose (he preferred crow feather quills himself, his handwriting was not neat by nature and the same factors that made crow quills useful for fine work like accounting books also produced sharp enough lines that he could generally read what he'd written later, but they were more expensive and he therefore kept goose quills around as well) and sheet of parchment to write on. "There you are. That's charmed so you shouldn't have to worry about the ink tipping over...charm should still be good, though never hurts to be careful anyway."

He listened politely to her summary of what he'd just said when she made it. It was, on the whole, a good condensation; perhaps she had the gift to brevity. He never had. It had always taken endless amounts of tedious editing to get to anything approaching brevity in his work. He had gotten better at it over the years, but still....

"If your grades begin to suffer," he said, happy to be able to reassure her on one point, "you can be sure I'll let you know, and we'll look into why that's happening." He was not always on top of things, he knew - he hadn't interpreted the situation with Tatiana Vorontsova's spelling several years ago correctly, had missed several significant warning signs with both Evelyn and the Mordue boy - but he liked to think he had learned from those past mistakes, and since he knew there was a potential situation here to keep an eye on before it even developed, he thought he would do better. Especially (though it made him feel some guilt, despite not believing it was really that much of a factor in his earlier missteps) since Ellie was one of his charges, specifically; it was quite literally his job to particularly look out for the Aladrens, though he didn't think that excused him from investigating if things looked odd with other students either. Or at least taking it to Nathan or Selina or Isis. He really ought to ask them sometime what they thought the correct course of action was in such cases; it would doubtless prove helpful to them all, sooner or later.

"For the rest, that's a good summary, really. I'm sorry there's so much...vagueness? Uncertainty? Uncertainty in it. There's a lot more that we don't know for sure about magic than there is that we do. Though we can look at that as a good thing - that many more interesting things to discover," he offered. He wasn't sure that would help if the subject was something really intensely relevant to his immediate experience, but it was the best he had right now.

16 Grayson Wright ...well, yes, but we can hope for the best. 113 0 5