[home economic magic] three is a magic number [all years]

Ricky was already in his classroom a good half hour before the lesson was due to begin. The first class of a new year was always exciting, and he looked forward to it for weeks beforehand. Getting to meet new students for the first time, and reacquainting himself with those he hadn't seen since before summer vacation. Either way, first impressions were important, and he wanted the kids to feel comfortable that they could relax in his class, ask any questions they needed to and not worry about their grades suffering just because they didn't figure something out right away.

The room setup was a little out of the ordinary. Comfortable, old-fashioned wooden desks and chairs were laid out in two semi-circular rows around one side of the room, with Ricky's desk in the front and a large space in between. He'd found this setup particularly effective given the large number of practical demonstrations he liked students use in his lessons, and it also gave the opportunity for students to come and stand around his own desk if he needed to show them something. The other side of the room housed several ovens, cupboards filled with cooking and household utensils, and a large selection of No-maj items. Some, like the sewing machines, had been adapted for magical use but others, like the ironing board, were there simply because Ricky liked the look of them and found them amusing.

Today they would be going back to basics. With five minutes to go before the beginning of class, he turned to the blackboard and flicked his wand. A piece of lime green chalk began to write

Good afternoon students; Welcome to Home Economics magic! Please call me Mr Cortes.

Take a seat and wait for class to begin. You may talk to the person next to you until everyone has arrived.

First semester - The Basics

- Cleaning charms
- Trash disposal
- Basic clothing repairs
- Fundamental kitchen spells
- Baking bread, with and without magic
- Super Soups
- The everlasting coffee pot
- Quiz

The chalk hovered in the air after this was finished, as if wondering whether it would be needed for anything else. Ricky left it there as, with another flick of his wand he sent a small roll of parchment over to each desk. The first students had appeared at the open door and he greeted them with a smile and a word or two to each as they filed in.

“Good afternoon, great to see you...Welcome back...Did you enjoy the sorting ceremony?...Ready for Friendship day?...Good to meet you...”

Some students - mostly the older, more confident ones - responded, others scuttled past and nervously found a seat. Ricky took a step back as the last student entered the room and closed the door. Then he crossed to the centre of the room and clapped his hands to get everyone's attention.

“Okay, so I hope you've all had time to read this semester's schedule, which you'll also find written on your parchments” he began as the chatter died down “Keep those safe, they're your record of work completed for this class and they'll change to show your attendance and grades.” Right now, each one simply listed the modules, but at the end of today's class each student would see they now had an attendance mark and any other notes Ricky deemed important.

“Now, who can tell me about any experience they have with cleaning charms?” he asked, looking expectantly around the room.

Cassidy was a fan of Home Economics, despite how strange the information was. It was unlike the other classes that were taught, and a lot of the spells that were taught in the class weren't taught in Charms or any sort of ritual-type courses. She found learning these practical skills useful in her opinion. Her grandparents were no-maj's on her father's side, so she did get to see the non-magical versions of what would be considered home economics. Baking, laundry, cleaning, sewing, and so on, were common things her grandparents did. Her mom's side were magical, so she got to compare the two in the class. It helped her determine which way was better. Sometimes magic would be considered overboard for something simple and easy that could be done by hand.

"Good morning Prof-Mr. Cortes," She smiled softly as she passed the man by to reach her seat in the middle of the room. She glanced around his no-maj contraptions, and gave a nod, "I see you have a new item in your collection." From last year at least. The second year pulled out her quill, parchment was already at the desk. The topics for the semester were already neatly there, and it was a special paper. There wasn't much she had to do for the first class it seemed. Other courses didn't have magical syllabuses. Mr. Cortes cared enough to have it all written down for students. Cassie nodded to herself, she had to remember to not lose the parchment. But what if she did lose it? Did that mean she failed the class?

The worry subsided as he began to discuss cleaning spells. She hesitated for a brief second before raising her hands, "well my grandma uses a thing called detergent to get out pesky stains, but I know my mom uses a spot vanishing charm on spots on shirts!" She didn't know the spell, but she knew it existed. It happened often during the summer because it was easier for the clothing to go through the washing process if they didn't have a stain on them. "It's a lot faster than detergent," the witch enthusiastically nodded at the professor. "Just a spell and poof, it's gone!" Well maybe not 'gone gone', there was that weird law of magic (or physics per her father) that matter couldn't be destroyed. It'd slip off the shirt if she paid any attention to the magic happening at home.

Emily walked into the Home Economic Magic classroom and took a seat near the back of the room. The room, so far, was quiet and only a few other students were present. Emily expected this class to be more filled, but perhaps it was because class hadn't begun yet. She set her bag down on top of her desk, careful not to displace the lone sheet sitting on top. She hugged her bag and rested her head on top of it. Things still felt unreal. She was now in her last year at Ilvermorny, she had to keep up with her studies more than ever now in order to pass her W.E.N.D.I.G.O. exams at the end of the year, and she had just been appointed to the Student Council. She had no idea why she was chosen for such a position, but she would try her best with the new responsibilities she'd been given.

What seemed like hours, only minutes, in reality, passed and Emily noticed the classroom was now more full than it was when she first entered. That meant class was probably about ready to begin and it wouldn't do for a Student Council member to be sleeping in class, especially on the first day back after break. The redhead noticed the board and quickly moved to find something to write with so she could jot down the words written in green chalk. She couldn't tell their importance at first glance, but thought it better to jot them down than not, just in case. However, by the time she found something to write with, she noticed that the information was already written down for her. Ah, so that explains the sheet sitting on the desk.

“Good afternoon, great to see you...Welcome back...Did you enjoy the sorting ceremony?...Ready for Friendship day?...Good to meet you...”

“Okay, so I hope you've all had time to read this semester's schedule, which you'll also find written on your parchments” he began as the chatter died down “Keep those safe, they're your record of work completed for this class and they'll change to show your attendance and grades.”

“Now, who can tell me about any experience they have with cleaning charms?”

Emily barely had any time to process her professor's words. This first class seemed to be passing by very quickly before she even had a chance to respond to anything. It was great to meet her professor, who seemed new, but she wasn't really ready for Friendship Day. She didn't have any friends here at Ilvermorny. Her friends were back home in New York. The Sorting Ceremony was roughly the same as when she was a new first-year. The new first-years stood on the Gordian Knot and were sorted into their new Houses. Wampus got a few new faces this year. I didn't expect him to use that sheet to keep track of our work and attendance. If Professor is keeping track of all of that, that's two less things I need to do.

As for the professor's question about experience with cleaning charms, Emily kept quiet. She wasn't one to answer questions or speak unless directly spoken to. She much preferred to listen, to both her teacher and her classmates.

Ryleigh was going to be late. Again. To one of the first classes of the semester.

She’d already gotten lost about nine times (and it wasn’t even noon yet), but was determined to have the place completely figured out in two— no, one week. Or at least the routes to her classes… and the fastest way to and from the Dining Room. For now, though, she was woefully out of luck. The brunette had the bright idea of skating to her classes to shave off some extra time (she saw Muggle students do it all the time) – but she’d barely made it down two long hallways before she was stopped and told-off (albeit kindly) by one of the staff, who temporarily confiscated her board and told her to come back to pick it up at lunchtime.

Still grumbling under her breath at the injustice of it all (and vaguely wondering whether she’d even be able to find this hallway again to retrieve her board), she sprinted down the hallways, her bag (which weighed nearly as much as she) swinging wildly on her shoulder as she skidded around the corners and tried not to plow anyone over.

Miraculously, she found the right room – just as the door was closing.
“Hi!” she greeted the professor breathlessly, flashing an obnoxiously large smile as hopeful compensation for being the last one through the door. She was sorely tempted to scan the room for a familiar face, but managed to have the presence of mind to make a beeline for the closest open seat.

Once in it, however, Ryleigh found herself fidgeting as Mr. Cortes – as he’d introduced himself – began the lesson. After nearly being late she was trying her best to salvage something of a good impression (or, at least, avoid making a worse one) – but it was so hard to be sitting for so much of the day! Her attention seemed to stray about every five seconds as it was, and that was outside of the classroom. She desperately hoped that Home Ec would be more interactive than just boring lectures.

The California native was never shy about speaking up, and she saw no reason to start now – however, she didn’t always have the best discretion as far as ‘polite topics of conversation’ went.
“My uncle uses one to clean his cat’s litterbox,” she volunteered, twirling her quill between her fingers. “And I think my mom uses the same one to clean up our dogs’ poop in our backyard. They don’t say anything when they do it, though, so I dunno what the actual spell is.”

If possible, Isis was even more excited for this year than she had been for her last. Her first year had been amazing, but it had also been a bit confusing, what with trying to remember where all the classrooms were and meeting everyone, and the place being so new. This year she not only felt more secure, but she'd been appointed to student senate! She'd campaigned at the end of last year, but assumed that the only votes she was going to get were from her fellow first years. Well, maybe that had been the case, but it had obviously been enough because she'd gotten a letter last week offering her a position. Lyon had teased her about it, in a good-natured way of course because he had no interest in any sort of official position, but Grandmama Arceneaux had been thrilled and had spent the whole week referring to Isis as "the next Macusa President". As much as she'd like hearing it, she was glad none of her schoolmates could hear!

Anyway, she knew that the most important thing was to make the new kids feel at home. She'd already told two first years how to get to the dining room that morning, and told them that they could ask her any questions they needed, and she was still full of that new-semester feeling as she entered the home economics classroom. It wasn't her favourite class, but she'd been pretty good at it last year and what was more important to the twelve year old, she liked Professor Cortes. "Sure! I already signed up for Community Engagement!" she said as she entered the classroom, deciding to pick the same seat as she'd had last year. There was a scroll on her desk and, in the absence of anyone sitting in the currently empty seat next to her she unrolled the parchment and discovered it was a duplicate of what was written on the board. That was cool...so long as she didn't accidentally lose it, she thought, just as one of the new first years skittered into the room in the nick of time and claimed the empty seat next to Isis.

She would have introduced herself then, but class began and Isis had a lot she could say on the subject. She nodded in agreement when Cassidy, a fellow second year, spoke up and then had to duck her head when the new girl added something that was both icky and hilarious at the same time. There was still amusement in her voice when Isis began to add her own thoughts. "My Dad's a janitor, so he knows just about every cleaning charm there is" she began "and he knows how to use No-maj tools as well, he's got a, uh...broom and some other stuff, you know, because he works in several different places and some of them aren't just for wizards, so he can use that if anyone comes in but then when he knows he's alone he can use his wand to get the job done faster and better..." she thought for a moment "and there's a spell my Mom uses when she's making quilts, to clear up all the scraps of fabric into different colours. It goes 'Separe pigmentum' and then all the pieces just fly into different piles...I can't do it yet though" she admitted, now slightly out of breath because she'd said all this very fast and forgotten to breathe in the middle.

In the moments before anyone else spoke up, she whispered to the girl next to her "Hi, I'm Isis. Welcome to Thunderbird house!" just loudly enough for the first year to hear.

Adam had been early, as a result of barely attending breakfast (he'd gotten an English muffin and fled) so, waiting outside for more people to go in so he didn't look like a try-hard, he finished his muffin at a more leisurely pace than he'd started it, and trailed in after an older girl in his house -- thank god he could pretend he'd thought Cortes was addressing her and not him and thus avoid small talk -- sat down as close to the entrance as he could (the entrance was also the exit, and Adam made it a goal to be the first one out of any classroom when the bell rang.) There was a little roll of parchment on the desk; Adam unrolled it for long enough to read and then to cram into his backpack to sort out later.

If they were only doing basic stuff, Adam thought he'd probably die of boredom by November. He already knew how to make soup. He already knew how to make bread.

Cortes was asking questions relevant to what was probably their first lesson -- and a wise first lesson, Adam thought; if they were going to do any cooking they'd better be adept at cleaning up after themselves, and disposing of trash, or whatever. Of course, Adam mostly had experience with cleaning charms through classes where they'd been taught to him, which was not in the same vein of answers that his classmates were giving about their magic families using magic at home, so he slouched in his seat, crossed his legs under the chair in front of him.

His classmates' answers seemed to be tapering off now -- there'd been more than Adam would've expected, but he supposed that it was the first day of class and they hadn't settled into the glazed-over inability to pay attention in class -- yet. That wasn't the important thing; the important thing was that Adam had a completely unrelated question. He raised his hand. "So... is the quiz at the end of the semester like, the only quiz all semester, or..."

The beginning of Alohilani’s sixth year at Ilvermorny was completely unexpected. She still hadn’t quite wrapped her head around it. She was student president. The student president. The Hawaiian witch had no clue how it had happened. Of course, she had run her campaign and everything, but she didn’t think she was ever in a million years going to win! It was a super exciting opportunity for her, and she was eager to take the role by storm. It was going to help her learn how to be a good leader and guide people, which was key for when she would return home and begin training under her family to take over one day. Being the student president would be a lot of pressure, sure, but since it was going to be so much fun, Alohilani didn’t mind this, for once.

Home Economics magic wasn’t Alohilani’s strongest area of magic or her favourite class, but she did like Mr. Cortes and did try her best to pay attention and work hard in his lessons. She hoped, at the very least, that their first lesson back would be fun. Walking in, Alohilani greeted him with a smile and respectful nod. “Hello! Nice to see you again!” She chirped, as she walked past him towards her favourite seat. As she waited for the lesson to begin, the Hawaiian witch scanned the chalkboard and frowned seeing cleaning charms as first on the list. Why? Just why. She thought to herself as she fought the urge to slam her head onto the desk. Why did the boring stuff always come first?

Mr. Cortes clapped his hands, and Alohilani moved her gaze onto him and listened carefully, hoping that perhaps they wouldn’t be starting with cleaning charms. Alas, his next sentence confirmed what she hoped wouldn’t be and she had to resist the urge to groan. It wouldn’t look good for the student president to appear disinterested, so she listened to other students’ comments before adding her own thoughts. She chose to ignore Adam and his unrelated question, there was no point in encouraging such behaviour, of course.

“Well, of course, the key one that everyone should know is the scouring charm. My Makuakāne uses that a lot when fixing his trainee Kahunas’ mistakes.” It didn’t escape her notice that not everyone would understand what she just said, and so she figured that as student president she was going to make sure that everyone was able to learn more about each other’s cultures and embrace them. Alohilani knew that she’d love to learn more about other cultures besides her own too.

"Awesome!" Ricky exclaimed when the first student spoke up, beaming at the young girl. His enthusiastic style of teaching might surprise some of the kids to begin with, but he couldn't help but feel excited that the new school year had begun. "Now...ah, getting ahead of myself here" he chuckled, having begun to silently clean the board out of habit. He quickly reversed the spell and then cast "Scourgify", speaking loudly and exaggerating the wand movement for the benefit of the new first years.

Okay, so you already covered my next question, because it's always good to relate the charms we learn to a no-maj equivalent where possible" he explained, creating a new chart on the blackboard with two columns, titled "spells" and "no-maj". @Cassidy Meadows 's suggestions of a spot vanishing charm and detergent went underneath these two columns. Ricky scanned the room for the next student to respond, his eyes briefly pausing on @Emily Rhodes . She was a good student, but not inclined to speak out. That was fair enough, but nonetheless he made a mental note to check if anything was troubling her later on.

To his delight, one of the first years spoke up next, but unfortunately @Ryleigh Katō offered him the opportunity to show how professors were able to keep a calm and unruffled demeanour no matter what was said to them. "That's a good example. Let's not write poop on our chart though, huh? I'm pretty sure we'll all remember that one..." here, he allowed himself to grin and naturally several students were giggling, either openly or behind their hands. Thankfully the next response was more informative. "A broom, that's great" he said to @Isis Arceneaux , adding that tool into the no-maj column, though then he paused in surprise. The charm he would be teaching today actually had a similar basis to the one the girl's mother used. He wrote separating charm into the 'spells' column.

He raised his eyebrows at @Adam Nguyen but resisted the temptation to appear irritated. There was always one student who liked to push boundaries in a class, and in a way, he was glad it had happened so early in the semester so the younger kids could learn quickly that a 'fun' professor didn't necessarily mean a soft touch. "I'm glad you asked that, Mr Nguyen" he said, turning slightly to face the boy "I like an enthusiastic student, and I'd hate to disappoint you, so you'll be glad to hear there'll be at least four pop quizzes this semester, and to make it extra-fun, we have a mid-term assessment as well!" Actually, Ricky hadn't decided how many quizzes there would be, because it largely depended on his well the students seemed to be doing, but that should give any other potential slackers something to think about.

"Yes, that's the one we all think of" he said to @Alohilani Ku'umomimakamae "very important, and by the end of the second week I promise you'll all have mastered at least the most basic use of that charm. Today though..." he paused, and with another flick of his wand - silent this time - ominously summoned a large trash can, overflowing with all manner of rubbish from empty baked bean cans through ice cream sticks to plastic bottles, though everything was clean and dry. Ricky appeared to be only paying nominal attention to what he was doing "we're going to look at ways of clearing up after ourselves...oops!" As he spoke, he 'accidentally' upended the trash can, covering the floor with far more rubbish than it should have been able to hold. Thanks to a simple containment charm the mess was under control, though it didn't appear that way.

"Now, those of you with no-maj relatives may have heard of something called 'recycling.'" He added the word to the relevant column. "In it's most basic form, this is a description of how no-maj businesses transfigure their trash into something they can use, though of course they can't do it as simply as we can. Their first step is to separate out the different kinds of trash, and I know at least one of you has an idea of how they do that" he nodded to Isis who was sitting up straight in her seat, clearly eager to begin "Can anyone tell me why this recycling is a good idea?"

[ooc: tl;dr Ricky's emptied a trashcan onto the classroom floor and is discussing recycling. Practical work will begin after his next post!]

John Henry made enough messes to realize how important this lesson was about to be, but as usual, he was having a difficult time paying attention. He drifted from thoughts of being outside, to the way the two columns on the board were uneven, to where did the poop go when Ryleigh's parents magicked it away, and back. He halted on that last thought for a moment, giving it a severe couple of minutes as he laughed with the rest of the class. Where did the poop go? He felt terrible for whoever was on the other end because he knew nothing was ever really gone. Magic could make things disappear from sight, but it didn't make them go away entirely on a molecular level; it had to go somewhere.

Rationally, a good wizard would charm it into the trash bin, but Jack wasn't entirely rational when he went off on tangents, and that was the last thing he'd think of. Picturing some chamber somewhere piled high with grossness, he shook a little and went back to staring out the window.

It wasn't until the idea of recycling was brought up that he returned to paying attention. "Oh," he said softly, he knew what recycling was! They did it at the shop. His chubby arm shot straight up into the air when it was time to give answers, and then Jack began. "It's a good idea, so we don't leave trash all over the trails," As always, everything came back to hiking and camping; he was a product of his upbringing after all. Being the child of two wizards that ran an outdoorsman shop and having spent half his childhood in the woods, of course, it did.

"Gotta clean up after yourself, and when you recycle, you can reuse stuff. Make new stuff. Not fill the um... what are they called, the places where they toss all the garbage?" He lost the string as quickly as he found it, and John Henry looked around at his classmates' faces, trying desperately to remember the term landfill. Feeling entirely on the spot now, his cheeks reddened, and suddenly, he wished he could be disappeared like the dog poo.

Leaning back in her chair Regina twirled her quill around between her index and middle finger idly. She'd been paying very little attention to the class and whole lot more on how the clouds were moving back and forth outside. It was a pretty decent day, as far as Quodot pot weather was concerned, and Regina wished she was anywhere but stuck in class. The Thunderbird had never been a top student, and she wasn't about to start trying to be during her last year at Ilvermorny. It wasn't like her after graduation plans had anything to do with academics. The aspiring singer knew she had to graduate, at the very least, for her mom, but she was done with school after that. Her mother had still been in school for Regina's whole life, the amount of homework medical students had was astounding, and it certainly wasn't the path for Regina.

Sitting forward, the front two feet of her chair slammed against the floor, making more noise than she had expected, but not so much that it'd be sure to interrupt the class. The professor had asked about Recycling, and because she wasn't evil, Regina knew it was a good idea, but she wasn't super about it either. She made sure to put empty containers from lunch into the right bin, sure, but she wasn't about to sign up to clean the highway or anything. Regina thought about giving an answer, but just like being too lazy to volunteer for anything meaningful, the seventeen-year-old witch was entirely too lazy to actively participate in class.

Isis was twelve years old now, far too old to snigger at the word 'poop'.

That didn't stop her from hiding her face momentarily in her hands and giggling merrily, though she quickly persuaded herself to look sober and sensible when her own suggestions were added onto the growing list. She shot Adam a glance though, irritated that he'd brought up the subject of quizzes so early in the lesson. Couldn't they just forget all that for the first class at least? Now everyone knew there were going to be quizzes and they'd turn up to every lesson wondering if this was going to be the day when the dreaded words 'Scrap piece of parchment. Numbers one to ten' were heard.

She decided to copy out the list, thinking that it might come in useful and would make her look like she was paying attention. No sooner had she began though but Professor Cortes literally threw trash all over the floor. Isis gasped and even rose a little out of her seat in surprise, but it seemed to her that this was meant to happen as a planned part of the lesson. Professor Cortes liked to do slightly crazy things. It was one of the reasons she liked this class, so she sat up straight in her chair, fingers drifting down to her wand in anticipation. She wasn't sure how to answer the question, though. If recycling was a no-maj form of transfiguration then didn't that mean they could just take some trash and make it into something else? But he was saying they had to separate it out into different kinds...

Confused, Isis kept quiet for now, hoping that everything was going to make sense soon.

Unsurprisingly there was less of a clamour to answer this time. Some students were clearly confused by what he was saying, presumably they hadn't heard of the term recycling before. Ricky was pleased when @John Henry Bird VII spoke up, even though his response was a little confused. he began with talking about trails, and that made sense to Ricky, whose mind immediately was drawn to thoughts of home and hiking with his no-maj uncle. Even as kids, they'd always taken their trash home, though at that age the only explanation that made sense was that leaving rubbish would attract bears. He decided not to mention this to the class, particular when dealing with a student as excitable and easily distracted as John Henry. He didn't need the lesson to be derailed this early in the year.

"That's exactly right! The more stuff folks can reuse, the less they have to buy new, so it's better for everyone if we can recycle as much stuff as possible!" The word that John Henry had been looking for completely passed Ricky by and besides, he thought 'place where they toss all the garbage' was quite descriptive enough, so he didn't elaborate on the answer. Instead, he was keen to get onto the practical side of the lesson, and not just because he'd covered most of the floor with trash. Not only that, but some students were clearly starting to get a bit restless, and there was nothing like a good bit of practical work to bring them back onside.

He gestured to the mess on the floor "Now, as you've probably figured out, your task today is to separate the trash into three different piles. You're all going to be using the same type of spell, but there are three basic forms - Separe chartam, separe metallum and separe plasticus. The first one will attract paper, the second metal and the third plastic." he paused here, turned to the board, and made the three charms and their descriptions appear on the blackboard. "The wand movement is in two parts, but still fairly simple..." here, he flicked his wand downwards to point at a tin can, spoke the incantation, and then jerked the wand sideways. The can promptly threw itself several feet to the left before landing on one of the few uncovered bits of floor.

"Okay, your turn. First and second years, concentrate on 'separe chartam' to begin with because paper is the lightest and the easiest to move, and don't try to separate more than one thing at a time. See how much trash you can collect onto your own desk - don't worry, it's all been cleaned - and there'll be house points for the best efforts at the end. Has anyone got any questions? Great - off you go!"

Having been thoroughly shut down earlier, and in a totally unreasonable fashion (if Cortes didn't want them asking questions about the syllabus, then he shouldn't have given them a syllabus!) It was driving him crazy that nobody knew what a dump was, but saying so would probably be a waste of his time, so he didn't bother.

For five years, he'd been convincing himself that nobody in this school cared to learn how things worked in the normal world, that only people like him were expected to make concessions to fit in. And this was a prime example -- what prior knowledge of cleaning charms could he possibly be expected to have? Besides -- he wasn't completely convinced that cleaning charms even worked. With nonmagical cleaning, he knew exactly where the dirt went; that wasn't always the case with spells, which (he was convinced) just presented the illusion of cleanliness. Wizards were lazy, was what it was. Adam's family had never had a mess that needed anything more than effort and bleach.

He slouched harder.

At least Cortes seemed to kind of be trying to teach nonmagical stuff, too, though Adam thought this was an exercise in futility. It was easier to have four places to put trash than it was to sort it by hand -- at home, they just had separate bags for bottles, cans, and paper. Magic was such an exercise in futility -- Adam could only collect so much garbage on his desk at once, and didn't particularly want to collect garbage on his desk, no matter how clean Cortes said it was.

But, naturally, there was no way out of this, and he wanted to impress on Cortes that he like, cared about this class, or whatever, so he sat up reluctantly and started cherrypicking soda cans from the pile, crushing them in his hands and lining them up carefully along the side of his desk.

Ilya didn’t really know what to think about Home Economic Magic. At home he had to help cleaning the hotel and restaurant manually when he had annoyed his parents and while he could think of at least one hundred nicer things to do it was not the end of the world to clean in the no-maj way. He assumed, though, that cleaning by magic was faster and more effective and thus left him with more time to do nicer things. He decided that it made sense to actually study the charms. However, cleaning just wasn’t cool – no matter how it was done.

He stared at professor Cortes as some of his classmates answered the teacher’s questions, his thoughts drifting off. Afternoon classes were the worst. He glanced at Regina, wondering if she, too, would prefer to be out on her broom now.

Recycling? Ilya looked at professor Cortes again as he spoke of no-maj relatives and recycling. The word sounded funny somehow and the boy wondered if it actually meant that things were brought back into a cycle. It seemed like it from what their teacher said and Ilya grinned. No-maj transfiguration sounded silly to him somehow.

They were going to sort trash today? The boy raised his eyebrows in disbelief. What good did it do to try and separate paper from metal and plastic? And why on earth should he want to collect trash on his desk?

“So we ‘collect’ this precious trash and what then? Do we vanish it or do you intend to actually recycle it?” He honestly wondered what they’d do after they had separated the different kinds of waste. “Wouldn’t ‘accio’ work just as well for this task?” he added, feeling that if he asked more questions he could put off the task a little longer.

Okay, she could do this. Isis liked anything that meant she got to use her wand, so she sat up straight, eager for the opportunity to begin. She wasn't even disappointed that she would have to stick to the easiest items for now - on the contrary, she felt like she was doing something important. As a second year, it was her responsibility to perform the task as well as she could so the younger students could follow her example. Hey, she might even be able to help them...

Not quite yet though, it seemed. Isis bit her lip and frowned, feeling a little disappointed. Ilya Denisov was so...cool, it made her sad to think that he might not be finding this lesson as interesting as she was. Secretly she'd been hoping that he might notice how well she was doing at the spell and come and talk to her about it. The thought made her blush and she stared furiously at her desk, though she had to admit she was curious about the answers. Particularly the summoning charm, though she had a feeling she might know the answer to that. When her brother had been practising he'd ended up with a mysterious bruise on his forehead, eventually confessing that he hadn't been able to control the spell well enough to stop the summoned object from smacking him square between the eyes. Isis assumed that this spell simply let you move things one at a a time and decide where to put them.

She was soon to find out, though her first attempt did little more than make a piece of paper feebly wriggle before flopping back into the pile of trash. "Well, it's a start!" she said in an encouraging tone to one of the first years who hadn't yet had the nerve to attempt the spell themselves "I'll bet it works this time..." she tried again, this time extracting one of the smaller crumpled papers which floated towards her wand. She smiled at her success, and then, glancing to where one of the older boys was collecting soda cans, she directed her wand towards her desk. To her delight, the paper moved to where she wanted it to go, and once she stopped concentration, dropped neatly onto the desk. Encouraged, she turned back for another try.