Woo... deskwork... yay on Defense Against the Dark Arts

Isis Carter-Xavier

February 12, 2022 3:11 PM

Name. That. Beast! [Intermediate DADA] by Isis Carter-Xavier

“Let’s get settled, everyone, settle,” Isis chimed, hushing the dull roar of students chatter before the class began. The intermediate group was always an interesting bunch, perhaps partially due to its size - having three grades in one was simply bound to have that effect.

“You’ll recall from previous classes that in this course, we often find ourselves performing practical and physical spells and behaviors, which means pushing the desks off to the side to free up some space,” Isis began. “However, we’re going to continue easing slowly back into the swing of things and do a little bit of desk work.”

With a flick of her wand, a stack of papers began to float through the room, dispersing themselves. The desks were positioned in pairs, and there was only one paper per pair of students. “Coming out to you now is a bit of a match-game,” explained Isis. “You’ll see pictures of dark creatures covered in this course. For those of you who were here last year, it’ll be a bit of a review, so make sure you try to pair up with the third years, since it’ll be brand new to them.”

“Please match the pictures to the name and descriptions by the end of the class. Notice the drawings are black and white - if you finish early, you can come get some colored pencils from my desk and color them in. If they’re roughly correct to what the creatures look like, you can earn some extra credit.” Isis paused and glanced around the room briefly. “Make sure your names are both on your papers, and go ahead and get started!”

OOC: Creatures included on the papers can vary from group to group, so don't feel you have to stick to the same ones you see someone else write about. Anything listed in the years 3 and 4 section of the Wiki
( https://harrypotter.fandom.com/wiki/Defence_Against_the_Dark_Arts ) is fair game, and each page would have 6 creatures. The descriptions would be brief, and you can use info from the creatures' Wiki page to come up with 1-2 sentences to use. Have fun!

Subthreads:

Woo! Worksheet! (Tag Henry) by Xavier Lundstrom with Henry Spellman

Bob! Susan! Umm... Muffins? by Valentine Duell with Amethyst Brockert

Woo... deskwork... yay by Billy Cobb with Reighleigh Mae Thorn

What Xavier said. by Ian Malone

12 Isis Carter-Xavier Name. That. Beast! [Intermediate DADA] 31 1 5

Xavier Lundstrom

February 12, 2022 4:49 PM

Woo! Worksheet! (Tag Henry) by Xavier Lundstrom

Xavier took a seat in DADA. In a lot of his classes, he’d been sticking with Oz, both because he was his best friend, and because it was less embarrassing to fail in front of him. Still pretty mortifying, but at least better than someone he was actively trying to impress or befriend. He wasn’t going to stick to Oz like glue though, both because that would be clingy and annoying, and because he really did need to make more friends. Today’s choice of seat fell somewhere in between those two. He got that Oz and Henry did not want to have the same friends, but he also thought it was weird if he completely didn’t know his best friend’s identical twin brother at all. He got the impression that him not getting on with Henry was something that would bother Oz a lot.

He wasn’t sure that DADA was going to be the best place to make a good impression. It really depended on the content of the class. On the plus side, if they were firing hexes at each other, he almost certainly would do zero damage to Henry, though probably firing curses at him wasn’t the best way to bond, regardless of how ineffective Xavier’s were. There was also that creeping worry about being useless, and letting other people see it. He was sure Henry knew about his difficulties with practical magic, partly because he was sure by now that the entirety of his grade level had to have noticed. He thought maybe the fourth and fifth years hadn’t been around him long enough to pick up the pattern, but Henry would have heard from Oz. Still, there was an open seat next to Henry, and if it was something he really didn’t want to pair with him for, he could just nope out when it was time to get partners. People often moved about a bit at that point.

“Hey, Henry,” he said, offering him a friendly smile as he slid into the seat next to him. He included his name, so that Henry would know he wasn’t just still half asleep and mistaking him for Oz. He wasn’t sure how anyone could actually make that mistake. Oz was Oz, and Henry was Henry. So very thoroughly so. He was pretty sure that even if they swapped hairstyles, he’d figure them out in about five minutes.

Luck was on his side, as they were assigned an incredibly mundane written worksheet. He refrained from whooping outloud or even smiling because that was the kind of behaviour that would probably lead to him getting his head flushed for the next year, or at least not to any great enhancement of his social life, but he felt palpable relief at the thought of a theory lesson. Even better, she was actively encouraging the older students to pair with them.

“Hey, wanna work together?” he checked with Henry. It seemed to make sense, given that they were sitting together. He glanced at the sheet, noticing that it had two incredibly similar creatures on it, and at least one that he didn’t remember seeing when giving his textbook a cursory flick through. Right, these were the intermediate creatures, so he had seen them once, at best, when doing some summer reading. Great. He’d got pretty good at all the theory stuff in beginners, but now it was time for a whole load of new information. Stuff that he would certainly have memorised by the end of the year, but didn’t right now. He was pretty sure that evil Baby Yoda and skinny Baby Yoda were, between them, a pixie and an imp, but he wasn’t sure which way round they went. He was pretty sure that pixies were bright blue, but that didn’t help with line drawings. “Welcome to Intermediates… There’s a whole new fun range of things that want to eat your eyeballs,” he muttered, though loud enough for Henry to hear, as he looked over the largely unfamiliar sheet. So much for this being his chance to shine.

13 Xavier Lundstrom Woo! Worksheet! (Tag Henry) 1529 0 5

Valentine Duell

February 12, 2022 5:57 PM

Bob! Susan! Umm... Muffins? by Valentine Duell

Valentine had long ago gotten into the habit of getting to class early. This had been a trick she'd learned from Gary, the game club founder. It gave her some time to work on game plans until class started. However, it was early in the year yet and she didn't quite have anything needed on that front yet. The club was working through things she had prepared over the summer. Which meant she had ample time to talk to people before class got started! She chatted with folks as they wandered into the classroom. Eventually Professor Carter-Xavier decided to start class and Val got to her seat to listen.

From what she had learned about her potential career path, this class wasn't bad to have, but wasn't as essential as some of the other ones. She had been doing okay in it, but whether or not she would continue taking DADA after this year she was still undecided. That was still a decision for a later date. Desk work classes were good though, whether she was better at 'theory' or 'practical' bits was a bit of a toss-up she thought. However, desk work classes meant she probably got to talk to people instead of casting spells at them or something else. This was a required partnership class! Whoo! She should find a third year, or at least make sure all of the third years had partners before finding one that wasn't... which meant she probably wouldn't get to partner with Bonabelle or Wally. Oh well, she was a prefect after all and needed to help out as best she could and set a good example.

Finding a suitable partner, she smiled wide at them. "Hi! Are you ready?" She examined the pictures on the paper and was surprised to discover that she recognized most of them. Admittedly, she had been in this class for two years now, but still she hadn't really thought that some of that stuff would stick so well. Val tapped her finger on one of the pictures, it depicted a scaly, monkey-like creature with an odd depression in the top of it's head. "How about this one, got any ideas?" The question came with an encouraging smile.

2 Valentine Duell Bob! Susan! Umm... Muffins? 1490 0 5

Billy Cobb

February 14, 2022 7:05 PM

Woo... deskwork... yay by Billy Cobb

Billy glowered at the paper. He usually liked Defense against the Dark Arts, it was usually exciting and adventurous. Usually. It was his third favorite class, after Creatures and Herbology. Charms, Transfigurations, and potions were pretty boring just trying to teach them how to do stuff. Defense taught them why they needed to know it and what they could do with it. Mainly because there were things like vampires and boggarts and such running around trying to kill you. You needed to know how to deal with that. Especially if you were a world traveler/explorer extraordinaire. Not that Billy was... yet. Once he was done with schoolin' here, he was off to explore all the dark corners of the world.

Filling out worksheets was not exactly his idea of a good time though. On the plus side, he hadn't gotten his sister for a partner. She was as far on the other side of the room as she could get. He could imagine some fun times might be had in this class with Iris, once they were allowed to throw some hexes back and forth at each other. Not today though, nope. They had a worksheet to fill out. He slumped down, his mind wandering off to more interesting things, as he gazed off into the unseen distance.

It wasn't until someone sat down next to him and actively attempted to get his attention that he pulled it back to the classroom. "What? Sorry... thinkin' about more fun stuff than this." He indicated the paper in front of them.

2 Billy Cobb Woo... deskwork... yay 1519 0 5

Reighleigh Mae Thorn

February 16, 2022 3:38 PM

Woo, girl things. by Reighleigh Mae Thorn

Ray supposed she should be thankful that it hadn't started until after the ball, but mostly she was just mad it had started at all. Starting at home also meant she'd had to go to her mother for help instead of the nurse here and that meant her mom knew. She'd done the whole show of getting Ray new clothes and makeup to show what a woman she was, how grown up she was, all of that nonsense. Ray didn't think the function of her internal organs had anything to do with how grown up she was and she was absolutely determined not to be a grown up at all. Except when it came to hygiene and maintenance because this was a very gross thing to get wrong. There were a lot of times Ray enjoyed the macabre; bathroom breaks weren't one of them.

She was late to class, having had to run to the bathroom and fight with a stupid wrapper beforehand, and took the open seat next to Billy when she arrived. She knew no one could tell what was going on with her but she still felt like they could. She tried not to think about that, or the raging cramps in her abdomen.

"I asked what we're doing," Ray said a little sharply, feeling grumpy for no reason and not really liking that about herself right now. Merlin and she was bloated. "Sorry," she grumbled. "It's boring?" It was probably the first time in her life she'd ever been glad of a boring class. "Partner stuff right? We can work together?" she confirmed as she unloaded the same gear from her own bag that she saw other students around the room had unloaded from there's.

OOC: The title here is Ray's narrow perspective of who menstruates; the author is aware that not all girls/women menstruate and not only girls/women menstruate.

22 Reighleigh Mae Thorn Woo, girl things. 1525 0 5

Henry Spellman

February 16, 2022 3:45 PM

Wooing is not my strength. by Henry Spellman

Henry was doing well. Things were looking up on the whole and that wasn't something he had ever expected from his life in a fantasy world, let alone the real world, let alone that those were the same thing, let alone that it would start happening while he was basically a kid still. Of course, he wasn't entirely sure what to think of any of those things, so he mostly tried not to. But things were going well with Oz, and with mom, even if that hurt a little bit, and that was what counted.

When one of Oz' friends - basically the only one that he talked about without looking totally bored, and the only one that Henry had noticed keeping in touch over the summer - sat with him, he couldn't help a cursory glance towards his brother either to make sure he got a nod of approval or to make sure his other half wasn't looking at all.

"Sure," Henry agreed, glad they didn't have to throw hexes at each other, except that meant they'd probably have to talk a lot more and Henry wasn't very good at that still. The fact that he'd basically just stood with Oz until Iris was free at the ball, all while Oz was muttering under his breath about the "interloper" that was the now very depressed looking Winston Randall, was proof enough that socializing wasn't his strength.

The creatures that looked like a goblin card come to life but weren't goblins because apparently those were real and very different than his cards would have led him to believe drew his attention and he nodded at Xavier's suggestion that everything wanted to eat their eyeballs.

"And use your bones to stab the next guy," he agreed. "Red cap," he added, tapping the picture of the one he'd been looking at.

22 Henry Spellman Wooing is not my strength. 1513 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

February 17, 2022 2:32 AM

I'm more familiar with one type than the other by Xavier Lundstrom

Henry glanced behind them when Xavier sat with him, and Xavier had a pretty good guess who he was looking at. His own quick sideways glance revealed that Oz was staring out of the window... He wasn't as good as Henry at reading Oz, and couldn't tell whether it was natural or Pointedly Not Watching, or what it was supposed to mean if it was the latter. He had the feeling that in the split second Henry had glanced across the room, there could have been an entire telepathic conversation about him, and tried not to feel too freaked out about that. Henry and Oz were bound to talk about him, and just because it was currently not out loud wasn't necessarily an extra reason to feel weird about it...

Henry agreed to work with him though, and even joined in with the banter about their imminent violent demises.

"Dang, bad luck, the next guy," Xavier said, with a glance at Henry.

"Ah, thanks," he nodded, when Henry pointed out one of the creatures that fell into the small and bumpy subgroup. "It having a red cap would have been a really helpful clue. It's almost like she did this black and white thing on purpose to make it more difficult," he grinned. "Though she'd probably deny and just say that color printing... isn't a thing so never mind," he mumbled.

OOC: Oz is mine, so writing for him is allowed. And fyi for Henry, it's so obviously the second one, helped by the fact that Henry looked just before Xav and probably caught him looking.

13 Xavier Lundstrom I'm more familiar with one type than the other 1529 0 5

Billy Cobb

February 20, 2022 10:59 AM

Woo... I'm not sure where to go next with this. by Billy Cobb

This class had suddenly gotten a whole bunch better. He cheered up immediately at Ray's mere presence. Maybe this wouldn't be such a bad class after all. He couldn't help but grin at her. The fact that she'd been a little bit irate at something went almost completely unnoticed. Almost.

His first thought was that she was annoyed at him because, well…. Iris usually was. Now that he thought about it, she had been slightly more so recently. However, Ray backed off and apologized, which made him figure it might not be his fault. She'd been a little late to class, maybe it'd had something to do with that? This was the first class of the day, so unless she overslept or got pulled aside by a professor… Oh! Maybe she was still getting used to the intermediate schedule and she accidentally went to the beginner class. He could see that annoying her. He opened his mouth to make a comment along such lines, but his brain was starting to get better at slowing down his mouth before it could finish processing things and stopped it.

The thought process wasn't terribly complicated as it went something along the lines of; Ray annoyed at something not him, good for him. If he made a comment about thing that annoyed Ray that wasn't him, Ray might get annoyed at him, bad for him. She couldn't get annoyed at him for not bringing up the annoying subject after all.

So instead, in response to Ray's question, he pushed the paper in her direction. "Yeah, boring stuff, but we do get to work together. We got some paper to fill out and then color." He sighed as he actually for once looked at the paper. He may have needed to scoot his seat just a bit closer to Ray to accomplish this since he had moved the paper in her direction. "I think we're supposed to match up the picture to the description of the critter." He knew he would need to be able to recognize them in the wild once he set off on his world exploration tour, but... could the professor bring them into class more? That'd be way more fun. "That's a werewolf," he stabbed his finger at the one picture. Werewolves were kinda cool, and made him think about that animal transforming stuff he and Oz had been looking at last year.

2 Billy Cobb Woo... I'm not sure where to go next with this. 1519 0 5

Henry Spellman

February 25, 2022 6:17 PM

. . . there's more than one kind? by Henry Spellman

It was weird because Henry knew that Xavier was a real person-- well, everyone here was real but he was real in the sense that he could use a phone and stuff and was out in the real world. Even knowing that, it was weird hearing references to color printing and stuff. Hearing a reference to "ink" that didn't mean the kind they dipped feathers in.

"Okay, right? How the heck are they so advanced but they don't have printers?" He looked at the worksheet again and wondered whether that meant someone had to hand draw this stuff and then they had a copy+paste spell or if it was some other sort of weird mechanic. "Do you think they use a printing press?" he grimaced, looking back at Xavier.

He was curious about a lot of things in life, and in this moment, he was most curious about why Xavier wanted to work with him. There were a lot of things it was okay to ask questions about but this was not one of them; it revealed too much and he'd already slipped into using we-they language talking about wizards. Still, Oz trusted Xavier and spoke about him like he could be different than some of the other kids they'd known in school, so Henry was determined to at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

"Which ones do you know?" he asked.

22 Henry Spellman . . . there's more than one kind? 1513 0 5

Reighleigh Mae Thorn

February 25, 2022 6:37 PM

Onward and upward. by Reighleigh Mae Thorn

Ray raised an eyebrow as Billy performed some mental calculations, but it settled back down as he chose well and moved forward. She raised it again though when he said there was coloring to be done today. Intermediate classes were a hard throwback to primary school apparently. Except she didn't remember ever sitting so close to classmates in primary school. Or maybe she did and she just didn't notice? But no, there was no reason to notice if she was sitting close to Billy, so it was no big deal.

"Werewolf," Ray agreed, taking it upon herself to be the team writer since she was pretty sure Billy's handwriting was only slightly better than a literal turkey trying to write with one of its own feathers. Perhaps that was based on some unfair assumptions - Iris' handwriting wasn't all that bad, after all - but she had seen Billy's handwriting and . . . well, it was best if she did it herself.
"Grey and black. I like the color scheme," she pointed out sarcastically, not very excited to color that one. "Hinkypunk," she added, jabbing at another one. "I know my punks."

She sat back in her seat with a sigh, one hand going to her writhing stomach and finding that no, it was only the insides that were writhing. "New idea: class is canceled and we go take a nap?"

22 Reighleigh Mae Thorn Onward and upward. 1525 0 5

Xavier Lundstrom

February 25, 2022 6:48 PM

Like 'yay' or like 'date me?' by Xavier Lundstrom

“Like, where you put the actual little metal letters in and then… squish out a book?” he asked, when Henry asked about a printing press. He was pretty sure he’d seen illustrations of those, with big handles on, though his understanding of how or why any of that was a good idea was hazy. He kind of wanted to laugh, and to bet that they did, but even though he knew, rationally, that no one was watching him right now, he knew he was saying the kinds of things to Henry that got him into trouble. He wasn’t allowed to be confused, or dismissive of the way wizards did things, even when they were weird as heck. “Maybe,” he whispered with a conspiratorial grin, enjoying one final moment of it before pushing that down, trying to focus on being a good student, who totally deserved to get a perfect write up about how well integrated he was, and then be allowed to go home, without people watching them. It flickered over his face, in the form of the childish joy he’d found in giggling over things with Henry abruptly going out.

“Uh, that’s an imp and a pixie,” he gestured to both of them, when Henry asked which ones he knew. “Or a pixie and an imp,” he added, to make it clear he wasn’t sure which way round they went. “Imp?” he guessed, jabbing the skinnier one with a finger.

13 Xavier Lundstrom Like 'yay' or like 'date me?' 1529 0 5

Billy Cobb

February 25, 2022 7:40 PM

That sound like a good plan by Billy Cobb

Billy watched Ray fill out the sheet as they went. For some reason there was something mildly mesmerizing about her hands guiding the quill about the paper. He shook himself free of whatever spell had been holding him. He looked at the hinkypunk that she'd pointed out, and nodded in agreement. It was a hard one to forget, not many critters out there had lanterns. "That one will be more interesting to color than the werewolf," he offered.

When she sat back, sighed and put her hand on her stomach, he gave her a bit of a concerned look. Maybe she was sick or something. He suggestion for an alternative activity rather than class seemed a little bit off to him as well. The idea of 'not doing class' was a common enough and one he readily agreed with on nearly every occasion, not that they ever actually did much along those lines. However, 'taking a nap' was not usually a suggestion that followed. She must be sick.

His brain was trying to process things again. If she was sick and that was making her annoyed, he'd already established that he didn't want to ask about it. However, if she was sick, why was she not using that as an excuse to go see the nurse and actually get out of class? For some reason he felt like he was walking along the edge of a cliff and one wrong step would mean disaster. It was an odd feeling and not one he'd experienced much in the past.

Waitaminute. 'We go take a nap?' She had suggested naps before on rare occasions, but something about the comment hit him this time. Thoughts of napping with Ray were a bit different now since they'd done the ball thing. They had danced together and the memories of holding her close as they moved about the dance floor brought up a slightly different view of the activity than he'd had previously. For the second time he shook himself free. Nope, that wasn't the proper way to think about a lady, especially one that might be sick.

Billy gave Ray a grin, "Well, I could always light somethin' on fire as a distraction iff'n you wanted to make an escape. But I don't know that we'd both make it clear."

OOC: Ray interaction bits approved by her author or from previous posts.

2 Billy Cobb That sound like a good plan 1519 0 5

Ian Malone

March 19, 2022 11:20 AM

What Xavier said. by Ian Malone

OOC: CW-Serious anxiety spiral. BIC:

Ian had no real fondness for Defense Against the Dark Arts. First of all, the idea that people would actually practice the dark arts was both horrifying and hard to wrap his mind around. Secondly, the Teppenpaw actually hated things like dueling both because he disliked the idea of potentially harming someone, and because he wasn’t very good at it. Ian didn’t even like going up against dangerous creatures even if they weren’t real ones.

This was not something he ever expected to use. Ian was never going to be in a situation where he had to go up against either a dark wizard or a dark creature. He absolutely hated anything dangerous because all he could ever think of was all the ways it could go wrong and one could be killed or at least horribly maimed. Being an Auror was a noble career path and apparently a necessary one to have people pursue but it wasn’t for him.

Unfortunately, Ian knew that he was going to need to keep this class after CATS in order to become a Healer when he would like nothing more than to drop it. Not only that, but he was going to have to do well on his DADA CATS too. Generally speaking, the fourth year was pretty decent at, say, identifying creatures and curses, knowing all of their terrible, terrible effects, and just general theoretical areas. However, when it came to the practical side, especially dueling or anything that involved any sort of athletic skill, Ian wasn’t great. In fact, he totally and completely sucked. Honest to Merlin, sucked .

So of course, even though he wasn’t even halfway through his fourth year, he was exceedingly worried about passing his DADA CATS. Because while the Teppenpaw was absolutely certain he could ace the theory, if they happened to have to duel, that would be averaged in and then he might not pass.

And if Ian didn’t pass his DADA CATS, then he couldn’t take Advanced DADA. If he couldn’t take Advanced DADA, he couldn’t be a Healer. If he couldn’t be a Healer, then he couldn’t help people with immune deficiencies like his mom. Which was, like, the most important thing in the world to him. The idea of not doing so…well, it was kind of unbearable to think of those people dying of horrible diseases. Of his mom dying of one, when Ian could have helped and didn’t because of a lack of athletic skill kept him from continuing on with a class he needed in order to do so.

It was a terrifying thought, that people could die , that Mom could die because he was a crappy duelist and completely lacking in athletic ability. How could he ever justify his failures to his little sister if Olivia didn’t have a mom because of him? How would he explain to Aunt Melanie that he’d killed her sister?

Athletics should not be that important! They should not ruin or end someone else’s life. It wasn’t fair. And how on Earth was it even fair that a CATS examiner, people who were older and more experienced at magic, would be testing him on dueling anyway, considering that the only way that Ian could imagine them doing that was to…duel the examinees. Did they just have the CATS examiners who were poor duelists themselves go up against those they were testing?

Professor Carter-Xavier began the lesson so Ian tried to quiet his panic and pay attention. After all, just because he disliked this particular class, she still deserved his respect and besides, if he didn’t know what was going on,he’d do poorly and fail. Which he was desperately trying to avoid. Besides, as this was DADA, so the odds were in favor of Ian having a brand new reason to panic shortly.

Except the lesson was not some terrifying and/or physically strenuous activity with the possibility of failure and humiliation and matricidal consequences, it was a worksheet! A wonderful, wonderful worksheet which he’d probably do well on.

Ian turned to the person next to him. “Would you like to work with me?” He asked.

11 Ian Malone What Xavier said. 1522 0 5

Amethyst Brockert

March 20, 2022 12:08 PM

Topaz by Amethyst Brockert

Amethyst really hated Defense Against the Dark Arts. She could do everything if need be, but it was just so unladylike. She wanted nothing more than to drop this class after her CATS as she was sure she would never need to use any of it. Or, rather, she would be sure about that…if it wasn’t for the fact that her older sister was a complete and total psychopath.

Okay, yes, if Amethyst had to keep taking a class that she hated because of Topaz, it was probably small in the grand scheme of suffering that the Aladren alumna had caused but still. Besides, Topaz would probably like it if the third year had to suffer through two additional years of DADA because of her so therefore, if Amethyst continued taking it after CATS, that would mean Topaz had won. And the Crotalus could not have that.

Basically, just anything to justify not doing something that she didn’t want to do and shouldn't have to. Amethyst very much wanted to believe Intermediate level DADA would be enough to protect her from anything Topaz could come up with. Granted, that probably wasn’t going to be the case. So, perhaps, the Crotalus could just…marry someone who could do the higher level stuff and protect her from her older sister if need be. And avoid her whenever possible since proximity seemed to be a risk factor for Topaz-related torment. Which would not be hard since Amethyst didn’t really picture them getting together much as adults.

Anyway, it was not as if physical overt violence was Topaz’s style anyway. That was too crude and too…Uncle Eustace like for the former Aladren’s taste. So, Amethyst was sure she’d be fine dropping DADA after CATS.

Fortunately, it was more than two years away, so she really didn’t have to worry about it yet. In fact, she wouldn’t even be thinking about it at all if it wasn’t for the fact that she was in DADA and did not want to be and was rather fantasizing about how much she wanted to drop this class.

However, once Professor Carter-Xavier began class, Amethyst was pleased to hear they would be doing a worksheet. Honestly, this was the one class where she genuinely wanted theory. While theoretical lessons in other classes were often dry boring things about how magic worked, and painfully dull in comparison to actually doing spells, practical work in DADA dealt with nasty spells and creatures and other distasteful, unpleasant, unladylike activities like dueling and therefore, even the technical, boring stuff, was the lesser evil than doing something that might make her…sweat.

Amethyst was even happier when Valentine Duell addressed her. The Teppenpaw was one of the most popular students in the entire school and while that wasn’t the be all end all-after all, if your year group was a certain way, the people who might otherwise be popular weren’t, such as with Angelique and sometimes the less popular ones were better people or people one had more in common with-it was still an honor to work with such a person and could only do positive things for Amethyst’s reputation.

She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That revolting little creature is a kappa.” Truly vile things that drank human blood, making them just slightly better than Topaz in her opinion.

11 Amethyst Brockert Topaz 1532 0 5