Pick a Card, Any Card on Elective Hall

Giselle Duell

January 01, 2021 7:38 PM

Gazing to the great beyond [Intermediates] by Giselle Duell

All things considered, Giselle thought everything was going fairly well so far. No one had kicked her out for not being able to teach, the students seemed to be doing okay, and her Sight hadn’t uncontrollably predicted disaster yet. There was something going on around the school though. Selina had posted a notice about it, then she’d… she’d experienced.. something. The memory still sent a minor wave of panic through her. She had only managed to do a little bit of research on whatever that had been, and hadn’t come to any solid conclusions to report. This bothered her more than she cared to admit. She didn't like knowing that she didn't know something. It made her feel helpless, and she didn't much care for that.

Perhaps she would see if she could do some more research tonight while her students were working on their lesson. With the beginning of the new term, they were naturally beginning a new section of course material. A section that she didn't particularly care for very much, but it was still better than other sections that would need to be covered later. Their first few classes of the term had covered the necessary introductions and basic concepts of astrology, now it was time to begin the practical parts.

Giselle met her class in the hall outside her classroom. She had needed a few adjustments made to her classroom for these lessons, so she had returned early from break to get them done with some grudging help of the school's groundskeeper. She briefly wondered if he and the Headmaster were in competition for being the most 'grumpy old man' on the school grounds. Andrew had also been able to 'tune-up' (as he called it) her work-around for figuring out where the celestial bodies had positioned themselves.

Once everyone had gathered in the hall, she addressed the officially. "Welcome to class, we'll head inside in just a moment. First I'd like to remind you that due to the nature of this subject matter, if all goes well today, you will need your telescopes next time and we will be meeting here but proceeding to the high level balconies for class after sundown." This was also assuming that Mr. Alamilla could get the weather charms to cooperate. Fortunately tonight's storm wouldn't affect class to much. Hopefully. "We will continue meeting at this later time until we have finished with the practical work of this unit. If there are any changes to that schedule, I'll be sure to let you know ahead of time," she allowed just the faintest of smirks, "unless of course you figure it out first." Divinations could be a fun subject.

With that, Giselle turned and opened the doors for her students. The changes to the room were now apparent. The cloth hanging across the ceiling had been removed to reveal the now domed ceiling. All of the tables and chairs were gone, replaced with cushions all over the floor. In the center of the room was what could only be described as a 'contraption', it looked mostly like a wooden and brass Ptolemaic spherical astrolabe, although there seemed to be more to it than that. She gestured around the room as she moved towards the astrolabe, "Find a spot to make yourselves comfortable with a clear view of the ceiling." She tapped the device with her wand and it whirled into action, the various rings spun about and wisps of magical light flashed within before it came to a stop.

"Today we will be putting our introductory knowledge to use and work on some simple horoscopes. This device positions itself into the location of the celestial bodies at any given date at time, as viewed from Earth." With this, she'd been able to figure out close enough what the sky was supposed to look like to pass her classes at Delphi. It wasn't perfect, but it worked well enough. She and Andrew had tweaked it a bit for classroom use. She tapped it again and lights erupted from specific locations in the globe and shined labeled images onto the ceiling above them. "If we were outside, and it wasn't storming, and it was nighttime, this is roughly what you would see in the sky. Without the labels of course."

Giselle then spoke clearly to the contraption, giving it a date and time a few years back. The machine whirled and spun again before settling on a new configuration. "Horoscopes," she continued, "Are usually associated with the beginnings of things, but they can be much more complicated than that. Much as the moon itself shifts the tides here on earth, so do all the planets pull at the weave of magical energies that witches and wizards use and sense. Each planet's harmonics pull differently, with different effects. Although they may be minor shifts and can go unnoticed, they still change things, and those small changes can ripple into something bigger. Sensing and recognizing these changes is a very delicate and difficult skill, but they can reveal," she paused for dramatic effect, "interesting patterns, if you know how to look for them."

Professor Duell began to walk back to her desk near to the far wall of the classroom. "For today, I want each of you to tell the astrolabe a date and time. It can be one of significance, or not as you choose. Then everyone will make notes of positions, alignments and so on to work out what meaning they can. Feel free to converse quietly as you do so." She was a fan of allowing the students to work together, this was a tricky subject and collaboration often resulted in more inspiration than discouragement. Plus, she knew what working alone had been like.

She returned to her desk to watch the students begin their assignment, and once they were well underway, she turned to her other work. Something strange was going on, and she wanted to figure out what it was.

OOC: I was mainly working from good ol' Wikipedia for this, with a little from astrology.com. You can use whatever you think sounds interesting though.

2 Giselle Duell Gazing to the great beyond [Intermediates] 1517 1 5

A Memory

January 01, 2021 8:57 PM

Pick a Card, Any Card by A Memory

It was just after Professor Duell returned to her desk that some of the students might have noticed a silvery mist coalescing into a man. He wore a top hat and a tuxedo with tails. He carried a wand, but it was a long shiny cylinder, not a shaped wooden one like all the students present would be familiar with. He was also holding up a deck of playing cards. There was a small army of prairie elves who would recognize this man as a previous groundkeeper at Sonora but none of the witches or wizards who could do so were still around.

This silvery semi-transparent man stood in the center of the room, right beside the contraption, in the center of everything, as was his wont. Not even being a mere memory could change that about him, even if the owner of the memory had only peeked into the room as she walked by, curious to see why the current groundkeeper she had seen leaving had been in there.

The intermediate divination students now present were not the audience he was playing to.

"First of all, I want to say Happy Birthday to my daughter," the ghostly image said, nodding at a student who was certainly not his daughter but who happened to be reclined at just the right spot. "I'm glad you could all make it to her birthday sleepover. And what kind of birthday party doesn't have a stage magician?" he questioned with a grin. "So without further ado . . ." he fanned out the deck of cards, so everyone could see they were actually cards and not some trick deck all containing the Queen of Hearts or something. "As you can see, this is a perfectly normal deck of cards. April, could you give me a hand here?" Another ghostly figure seemed to stand up from amongst the students, this one a young girl, probably around eight or nine years old, wearing pajamas covered in unicorns. The man smiled at her and shuffled the cards, then spread them out, face down. "Pick a card, any card."

She picked one.

"Great, now show it to the other girls and tell them you did not expect to be asked to help out for this trick."

The girl showed some of the class that she held a two of clubs. The original audience apparently had been in a semi-circle rather than a full circle. "I was literally not expecting this," she promised to everyone.

"Okay, put the card back, and I'll tell you what it is." She put it back into the fanned set of cards she had taken it from. The man deftly closed them back into a deck and tapped it with his fake stage wand. Then he did some fancy shuffling moves and flourishes, and ended up holding the deck out with the two of clubs showing at the bottom of it, first toward April, then the other students who had seen April's card earlier. Without looking at it, he said with triumphant certainty, "Your card was the two of clubs."

April looked shocked. "It was!" she declared before both she and the man faded back into mist amidst the sounds of a small audience applauding and then sound and mist both dispersed.

OOC: As this is a small class, and you all are present for it, and we are hitting endgame for this plot, any intermediate divination student who wants to be infected by this memory may do so by posting to the class. Please note however that reinfection is not possible, so if you have already posted a Memory for any character in Int Div, they may not post another even if they are present in today’s class.

1 A Memory Pick a Card, Any Card 0 A Memory 0 5

Anya Delachene

January 03, 2021 9:08 AM

Strange but kind of awesome by Anya Delachene

Anya had decided she would take divination based mostly on the idea that she probably wouldn't fail something that was, by most accounts, mostly subjective. She needed a good grade to bolster her potions, charms, and transfiguration scores. Care of Magical Creatures helped, but not enough. Her parents liked seeing Es on her report cards, but didn’t much seem to care how they were distributed, and she could get a bit more creative with her Divinations homework than she could with, say, Potions, which made her much more likely to remember to do it.

And though she hadn’t known it a year ago when she picked her elective, after a couple counseling sessions with mom this winter break, she now knew Divinations had been her mom’s second favorite and second best class at Sonora, too, so that was kind of weird and interesting to know, and it had given them a nice neutral topic that they could both talk about without infuriating each other, so that was strange but kind of awesome.

‘Strange but kind of awesome’ seemed the theme for the day, as they walked into the class and Anya saw the stars overhead and the cushions on the floor. “Neat,” she said aloud, as much so their blind teacher could know she was appreciating the room’s redecoration as because it was true.

She plopped onto one of the cushions, and looked up. If she couldn’t be flying in the sky, looking up at it was the next best thing, and she’d always kind of liked looking at the stars - but not enough to take Astronomy, which was sure to take all of the joy out of such an activity. Astrology, on the other hand, was an entirely different horse.

Anya was still deciding whether she wanted to shout out her own birthday, her adoption day, or the minute Mom invited her to go with her on a ride at the beginning of midterm, when something else strange but kind of awesome happened: A ghostly magician appeared in the middle of class and did a card trick.

As it was a divination class, it suddenly struck her to wonder if some of those guys were actually divinators and that was how they knew what the card was. “Professor Duell!” she called out when the scene was over, “Was that guy part of the class, and are stage magicians ever divinators?”

1 Anya Delachene Strange but kind of awesome 1453 0 5

Giselle Duell

January 03, 2021 10:25 AM

We've done card tricks already... by Giselle Duell

This wasn't making any sense. Giselle had started off her class time investigation into the strange phenomena with her trusty deck of tarot cards. Like the other decks they had been using for the tarot unit last term, these were not the decks of cards used by Muggles. While they were not crafted with the same level of power as wands, a wizard's tarot card deck was infused with certain reagents and subjected to various charms while being created. These things helped focus and tune the cards to the will of the user and the vibrations in the ether. They didn't just flop out randomly like the Muggle cards did.

That meant that it took more focus and attention to use them. Also, the longer someone used them, the more in tune they became. Giselle had been using this deck for quite a few years now, and she could normally decipher what it was tying to tell her. Today though, they seemed to be telling her nonsense. The past, the present, contagion? Birthday? She was so focused on the cards that she took the voices in the classroom to be her students conversing amongst themselves. Until Anya called out her name.

"Yes? What is it?" She turned her focus back to the room and got a new image of it with her wand. Something was wrong, but she didn't 'see' anything other than the normal class. The room had fallen silent. "Guy?" She repeated back questioningly at Anya. There was no 'guy' in the classroom. As for he second question, ordinarily she might assume it was connected to the non-existent guy, but it was coming from Anya, so it could just be a random Anya question. "As for stage magicians," she paused, "They could be, certainly just as much as they could by a normal wizard. That would be an interesting line of work for them, and I'd imagine they would have to be very careful." She paused again, hesitantly, just for a moment. She wasn't sure she wanted to know, but at the same time she couldn't help herself. "Why do you ask?"

2 Giselle Duell We've done card tricks already... 1517 0 5

Anya Delachene

January 08, 2021 7:34 PM

We did. I remember that. by Anya Delachene

Anya grasped from Professor Duell's confusion that this had not been a planned interlude to their lesson, and she had no idea what Anya was talking about. She glanced around at her classmates to check that she hadn't imagined the whole thing, but they did seem to have some idea what she was on about and didn't seem nearly as confused as Professor Duell. So that was the good news.

The bad news was that the professor had - obviously - not seen the guy and didn't have the context for either of her questions.

"There was a ghost. He said he was a stage magician and he did a card trick, then he went away," she tried to explain, hitting most of the main bullet points. "I was just wondering if he was supposed to be teaching us something. And since he guessed the card right, and this is divinations, I just wondered if he could use divinations to do that. But if you don't know about him, I guess he wasn't supposed to be here, and he was just having fun." If it didn't mean being dead, she thought being a ghost would be kind of cool. They never had to touch the floor, they didn't need to follow rules, and they never had homework. "He wasn't one I'd ever seen before though. Do we have a new ghost on the grounds?"

1 Anya Delachene We did. I remember that. 1453 0 5

Mara Morales

January 14, 2021 6:09 PM

It probably didn't help my uncertainty about things much. by Mara Morales

After a semester of work at it, Mara still was not sure what she really thought of Divinations.

On one hand, they were a semester into the program, and so far, she had no more than a hint about the existence of things that could help her get concrete unfair trade advantages, and the hints she had picked up had been maddeningly vague. That second part had particularly registered as a red flag. She was not, after all, entirely unfamiliar with horoscopes in her own world – they could get stuff kind of right, but it was only because they started out so vague that it left lots of room for interpretation. That meant gibberish was a perfectly likely manifestation, along with confirmation bias, selective picking of data to fit a narrative, unconscious influences…

On the other hand, though, this was the wizarding world. Mara had seen things in the past two and a half years that seemed more staggeringly marvelous than somehow being able to tell – or maybe lock into place, through the process of making a prediction? – what would happen in the future. Professor Duell, too, did not really behave like she would expect a total sham to behave; she wasn’t like some carnival psychic, and seemed to take her subject as seriously as any of the other teachers did. So who was Mara to say that it was the same as nonsense horoscopes at home?

But then, on the other…other hand, there was also the old adage about not keeping your mind so open that your brain fell out….

The intro to astrology classes had kept this conflict on her mind lately. She was hardly a scientist by necessity, but she was pretty sure she had not dreamed up the idea that the lights they saw as stars today had left their parent bodies a long, long time ago – so long ago that the star might be dead or something by the time a human ever saw it, and they might not know that for a long time yet. If everything they could see was from the distant past, , how were they supposed to find out the possible future from it?

Hopefully, the practical unit would provide some insight on this problem. If it did not, then she was going to write home to double-check what she thought about how stars worked, and then she’d just ask Professor Duell directly. First, though, she’d take notes and see what she could find out passively.

Interesting stuff, it turned out. Mara wanted badly to go examine the device in the middle of the room and ask about how it worked, but the lecture gave her some points to think on by itself, too. The stuff Professor Duell was saying seemed to go in line with stuff Professor Wright had said – stuff where he spoke as if magic was one of the universal forces, like gravity, or the nuclear (or was it thermal? Or both?) forces. And ‘harmonizing’ – she was pretty sure that either Wright or one of the books had said something about ‘charm’ originally meaning something about chanting or singing? But what they did in their classes here wasn’t really musical…that was something to think on, she thought.

Later, though. For now, while she assumed someone closer to the astrolabe was about to make the first request of it, she scribbled down a few ideas as fast as she could, until something silvery-bright caught her eye….

She stared at the spectacle, pen held in midair above her paper, as silvery figures appeared from seemingly nowhere and appeared to do…a normal people card trick. She jumped at the ghostly applause from nowhere, and was somehow not entirely reassured when the figures she could see and the noise-makers she could not began to disappear.

“There were two of them,” she chimed in after Anya Delachene pointed this weird phenomenon out to Professor Duell. “A man in a top hat, and a little girl. And it sounded like people were clapping, but I couldn’t see anyone in here clapping.” She glanced around at her classmates, wondering if anyone would correct her. “And they just appeared and disappeared out of nowhere.”

16 Mara Morales It probably didn't help my uncertainty about things much. 1472 0 5

Giselle Duell

January 17, 2021 9:16 AM

Only through uncertainty can we be sure of anything. by Giselle Duell

Giselle's mind processed what Anya and Mara were telling her. There had been an apperation, just now, in her room. Right under her very nose. One that didn't involve wizard's battling. She hadn't even noticed it. Now what? She thought back to what her cards may have been telling her, what were they saying? She stood a bit slowly and scanned the room once again. Nothing out of the ordinary. She sighed. "To the best of my knowledge, we do not have a new ghost Anya." Giselle paused just a moment before continuing.

Then she addressed the class as a whole, "That, I believe, was one of the strange manifestations that has been seen around the school lately." This topic had come up during staff meetings, what to do if something weird happens in class instead of the few isolated incidents they've been having so far. She would need to tell Selena once class was over and she suspected that meant that the deputy-headmistress would then be making a school-wide announcement of some sort. She knew some of her students had already encountered some. Ellie had, she had been there at the great wizard battle outside her own room... now this one was in her room.

"As far as we have been able to determine, they are harmless and insubstantial." She'd really hoped that this would have happened in someone else's class. Then she wouldn't have to figure out what to tell the students. "However, we are still trying to figure out what they are and what is causing them." Her cards danced back through her mind, birthdays? "I am sure that after this, Professor Skies will make a general announcement. In the mean time, if you see one make sure to take note of the time and location, then report it to one of the staff as soon as you are able."

She smiled, hoping that would cover the bases for the moment. "You should be able to return to your work now." Giselle moved back to her seat. Thank goodness that was over. Hopefully she'd done things right.

2 Giselle Duell Only through uncertainty can we be sure of anything. 1517 0 5