Like a locked box on Charms

Grayson Wright

June 22, 2023 9:47 PM

Advanced Charms - Lockup by Grayson Wright

"Hello, everyone," Professor Wright greeted the Advanced class, as was customary. "Hope, hope everyone had a good weekend. I also hope you spent some of it practicing your multi-step locking charms, since we're going to test them out together today."

Locks, of course, were easy enough to enchant. They were simple devices, really, and thus simple to manipulate with magic. This was why not that many people in the wizarding world with anything of value to their names bothered with them for anything except childproofing. Better ways to secure things, however, required more complex magic. The most secure sorts of seals, of course, were beyond anything they would learn in Advanced Charms - some were more in the province of Defense Against the Dark Arts, and some were simply things that were not taught in school, for various reasons; a few might not even constitute magic that could be taught in school even if all ethics and safety concerns were set aside, as the goblins were as jealous of their secrets as wizards were of wand usage - but there were nevertheless several means of securing objects which fell within the Charms curriculum, and these were what the Advanced class had been studying recently.

For the current project, he had given them each a plain box and asked them to come up with designs for securing these. The locks were to require a correct sequence of wand taps, and the boxes should be decorated in such a way that it was far from obvious what the points which made up the combination were. He had asked them not to share their designs with their classmates, and supposed some of them would have seen through the request and swapped papers in private anyway, but in theory, they should now be able to secure something. Now, they would see if theory aligned with practice.

"You'll have ten minutes to place your charms on your boxes," he informed them, "and then, I want you to swap boxes with another student. Try to open your partner's box. I'd prefer it if you didn't set anything on fire, but within that boundary, try a few different spells if you please. I'll walk around throughout the lesson, observing both processes - you casting your charms and you working to break your partner's enchantments - so, bonus points for anyone who can perform a successful spell nonverbally. Once we've done that - until the boxes areopen, or else it, it looks like they aren't going to be opened - you'll get your own box back, test it to make sure that nothing your partner did to it destabilized your charms, and add whatever comments you wish to add to your reports. After that, work on your essays about these charms, I want those by the end of class. Any questions? If that's all, you can get started."

OOC: The idea I had in mind for this one was inspired by the Diagon Alley bricks - you have to know which points to tap to get the box/door/whatever to open. Alohomora should not work, but other than that, go crazy and have fun!

Subthreads:

Like a locked box by Oz Spellman with Billy Cobb, Augustine Reed-Fischer

16 Grayson Wright Advanced Charms - Lockup 113 1 5

Oz Spellman

June 23, 2023 9:55 AM

Like a locked box by Oz Spellman

Oz took a seat at the front of the class. It wasn’t his preferred space at the best of times, and especially not when they were meant to be working on something secret—people were blatantly going to cheat at the class project, and he was opening himself up to that by making it easier for others to watch him. But it was much easier to ignore Xavier’s presence in the room if there was no way of him accidentally being in Oz’s field of vision. So long as Oz kept his attention front and centre, he didn’t have to see that Xavier was here. In touching distance but so far away. Looking healthier but still sick. He didn’t have to wonder how much of the latter was down to Oz’s own behaviour eating away at him…

Xavier’s absence squeezed on his heart like a vice, and if he looked at him too long, he was going to cave, and decide that the best solution to get through it was to let Xavier back into his life, and he couldn’t.

He took the end seat, in order to get as much privacy as possible. He did not turn around during Professor Wright’s instructions, not daring to verify whether the itchy feeling of eyes boring into the back of his head was real or imagined.

He turned to his box. The hardest part for him had been the design element. He could make up a secret combination no problem, and he could remember it himself without having to leave himself clues. If the point was to fool other people, then surely no design at all was better? And that would have suited him fine, as the ‘make things pretty’ element of transfiguration had always been his least favourite. He’d gone for a simple grid of crossed lines, running all over the box with little space between them. He figured that qualified for ‘not easy to guess’ because even if people worked out that the intersection of two lines marked the place they had to tap, they wouldn’t know which lines, and there were loads. And they weren’t being marked on how pretty it was, thank goodness, they just had to pattern it somehow.

He hunched over his work, both to shield it as much as possible, and to minimise the temptation to look around as he worked. He wondered whether putting walls up was going to help with this particular task, though he more suspected his focus and his grades were in for a rough time. He completed his Charms, making a series of key taps, including one on the base of the box, which he thought was a good, sneaky move.

That brought him to his next biggest challenge. A partner. The dull, constant pain of his split from Xavier surged with an acute pang. He wondered how obvious it was to everyone else. He hadn't sat with Xavier for a single meal since he had been back or paired with him in a single class. They had been together so often that it probably would have stood out, even if it wasn't made more gut-twistingly obvious by the fact that, without Oz, Xavier was so often alone. He wondered if everyone else thought he, Oz, was a complete jerk. He wondered if Xavier was alone right now... But instead of turning to find out, he found someone who was close enough that he didn't have to move into Xavier's orbit.

"Hey. Wanna swap boxes?"

13 Oz Spellman Like a locked box 1514 0 5

Billy Cobb

July 09, 2023 8:57 PM

That's the idea, right? by Billy Cobb

Advanced charms was hard. Billy was managing, but it sure weren't easy. Creatures and Herbology came easy enough, they made sense in his head. DADA wasn't bad, there was some thinking, but a lot of it was almost instinctual. Charms on the other hand was a lot of thinking and planning, but it was something he thought he ought to be good at, so he worked at it. This project was a little different, and kinda neat, so that was a plus.

He'd designed his box to be covered in wilderness scenes. All sorts of animals in a forest, most fairly obvious but a few of them well hidden in the foliage. His idea was to tap an eye of the correct creatures in the correct order. Half of those creatures were well hidden. He thought it was a rather ingenious and fool-proof plan. Actually creating the box in the ten minute time frame that the Professor had given them was the more difficult part. He spent well more than half of it trying to apply his design alone onto the box. So he was a bit rushed in getting the unlocking taps placed before time ran out... and they may not all have landed exactly where he wanted them. But they were at least in the right vicinity.

Oz asked him about swapping boxes as he was just finishing up, "Yeah, sure... hang on just..." Billy tapped his box to set the last three spots while trying to shield Oz from seeing where he was doing it. This was why he had sat in such a strange place today. He figured they'd do box swapping and wanted to trade with Oz. Even if that meant sitting way up front.

Finally finished, Billy unveiled his creation with a flourish. "Ha, ha! Good luck defeating my masterpiece!" He grinned at his roommate with a smile just daring the other Pecari to take up his challenge. "Now what did you come up with?"

2 Billy Cobb That's the idea, right? 1519 0 5

Augustine Reed-Fischer

July 14, 2023 11:22 PM

Love is an open door... I love you guys. by Augustine Reed-Fischer

Gus had gotten exceptionally high grades in all of his CATS. It was ridiculous. His highest scores were in Transfiguration and Charms and what the heck was up with that? He supposed it just made sense somehow for him but he wasn't sure he could quite say how. It was just that the theory of it was easier to wrap his head around because there weren't animals or plants or potions at risk of exploding if he bunked it. Plus it was the most LARPy part of this whole magic world. It was easy to feel silly watching a plant and hoping to notice if it got a speckly leaf or something but there wasn't time to feel silly when you could feel the power surging in your chest and you could see the success appear right before your eyes.

So yes. He was in advanced charms classes.

But so were his best buds!! They were sitting together and he wasn't sure if it was coincidence or not. Oz usually preferred Xavier (although not lately) or Henry (although not at first) and Billy usually preferred Ray, buth since all of those people were sitting elsewhere, Gus couldn't be sure who had decided not to sit with who. He was honestly just glad that he also wasn't sitting with any of those people because he sure as shoot didn't want to get in between his best buds and any weirdness with anyone else.

Instead, he completed his box - the lock was a series of taps meant to replicate the beat of Thriller and the design was flowers and leaves and crap so no one would know it was a spooky song - and leaned way forward over his table so he was near enough to his friends to be heard by them.

"Wassup, my buds?" he grinned. "Room for three? Wanna do a good swapsies amongst the brothers of Pecari seven?" It was impossible to tell whether he was serious or joking but it was clear that he loved his friends.

OOC: Gus is totally interrupting and yall can be like "nah, no room for a third" if you want.

22 Augustine Reed-Fischer Love is an open door... I love you guys. 1509 0 5

Oz Spellman

July 21, 2023 3:59 AM

Yeah, like, in a very different way to my other friend, you too, man by Oz Spellman

OOC: CW mild internalised homophobia

Also, hope the opening doesn't seem like retconning. Happy to edit if so. Also, tried not to move it on too much in case anyone wants to object to the box arrangements and switch them up further. BIC:

Billy was, as usual, messing several things up. Only right now, it was to Oz’s advantage. Billy had spent way too long fiddling around with a fancy design of animals, which was nice and suited his personality and all, but that was not what they were being graded on. It also meant that Oz was done way before him, and got to side-eye Billy’s box as he hastily applied some of his lock charms. Going fast and being secretive weren’t super compatible, and Billy only really started trying to hide his box after Oz drew his attention to the fact he was waiting. He was pretty confident he knew at least the first couple of moves…

Though Gus then threw in a curve ball by asking to join. Oz was glad for the company. Gus was always happy and seemed to like… genuinely like them, for whatever stupid reason. He didn’t think his roommate was laying it on extra thick since Xav’s departure, because it would have been hard for Gus’s enthusiasm to be thicker or to seem fake. And whilst Oz would rather die than admit all that out loud because when he put it like that it sounded gayer than the fact he’d gone to third base with a boy, he was… sort of grateful for it.

Right now though, he had no idea how much of his work Gus had been able to see from his angle. Oz had seen zero of Gus’s, obviously.

“Sure, you can have mine,” he said. Even if Gus had seen it, this meant Oz kept his advantage at having seen some of Billy’s, and passed on the disadvantage of Gus being behind them to Billy.

Once they’d swapped, he stared at the box, feeling like he’d maybe missed something.

“Wait, are we meant to use some kind of magic to figure this out or just… guess?” The former would make way more sense, but he didn’t remember anything being said about it.

13 Oz Spellman Yeah, like, in a very different way to my other friend, you too, man 1514 0 5

Billy Cobb

July 28, 2023 3:30 PM

This is great! by Billy Cobb

Awesome! Gus was here as well! "Sounds good to me," He added as Oz agreed to the formation of a trio. Oz had already given Gus his box, so Billy handed his over to Oz and received Gus'. It was a very flowery box, lots of plants. He thought it looked like something Iris might have designed, she was way into flowers and stuff like that.

He shot Oz a smirk, "Good luck by the way." There was no way anyone was going to get his box open. He figured he'd have Gus' open in no time flat though. He had a secret weapon after all. When Oz asked about how they were to go about opening the boxes, he figured that was as good a time as any to unveil it. "You go ahead and guess. I'm using the learning and such that we've picked up along the way. Watch, and be amazed."

Billy carefully adjusted Gus' box in front of him, then with his wand in hand he began to make sweeping gestures over and around the box with it and his free hand. This was all just showmanship for effect, but it would be worth it in the end. Finally he moved his wand in an easily recognizable movement and in a hushed but forceful voice stated clearly, "Alohamora!". Then he watched the box triumphantly.

Nothing happened. "Huh." He looked at his roommates, "That is the spell we learned for opening locked stuff, right?"

2 Billy Cobb This is great! 1519 0 5