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

Mr. Cortes said her example was a good one, and she grinned back. Her contribution made for the moment, she started doodling on the edge of her wrinkled parchment (it had gotten stuffed rather haphazardly in her bad this morning) when a whisper beside her caught her attention: “Hi, I'm Isis. Welcome to Thunderbird house!”

“Thanks— oh!” Ryleigh was not good with names, but she did tend to remember faces well: and as she glanced over at this girl’s, she felt like she’d seen it before. And when she said her name, the realization clicked for the eleven-year-old. “Wait, were you at camp in Vermont over the summer?! At the bonfire?” she whispered back excitedly.

Other classmates began speaking up in the interim, and Ryleigh recognized another of them: Adam, a fellow Californian and skater that she’d also met at camp. She didn’t really listen what he had to say, though, because her attention was split between her doodles and whisper-talking to Isis.

Then Mr. Cortes dumped a whole bunch of garbage all over the floor (which made a lot of noise as it clattered around and knocked against the walls and the legs of the desks), and looked expectantly at the older girl and asked about recycling – but a curly-haired boy spoke up instead and mentioned reusing things. Both of Ryleigh’s parents were Magbobs, but ‘recycling’ wasn’t something that the girl remembered hearing very much about. Her attention began to drift again – but sharpened when she heard that they were going to get to try out some practical spells. She drew her wand, already fidgeting with it until she was given the go-ahead.
She wasn’t particularly thrilled with being advised to focus on the ‘lightest and easiest’ target, however, but at the same time was still hoping to make up for nearly being too late to class. Ryleigh scanned the floor, looking for the biggest piece of paper she could find – and grinned as her gaze alighted upon most of a newspaper. She’d often heard the older kids at the skate park she frequented say: ‘Go big or go home’ – and Ryleigh rather liked that sentiment. Though it had taken a few extra moments, the First Year had acquired her target and was feeling very confident.

“Separe chartam!” she repeated enthusiastically, imitating the teacher’s wand movement with a little too much zeal, which sent her sheaf of newspaper flying across the room… to accidentally crash-land on Adam’s desk, scattering his neat arrangement of cans to the floor with a loud clatter.

Ryleigh clapped her hands over her mouth, eyes widening slightly.
“Sorry!” she called out, genuinely meaning it – but then began to giggle uncontrollably as she replayed in her mind the cans soaring through the air in slow-motion. She’d never intentionally mess up someone else’s work… but in a way it was oddly satisfying to engineer some harmless destruction.

As expected, most of the older students - some of whom had completed variations on this assignment before - were immediately successful, while the youngest ones struggled to begin with. Those in the middle had mixed success, and Ricky ducked as a can came flying through the air and whistled just past his ear. Spinning round, he caught it as it hit the wall behind him.

"Want to try that again?" he asked cheerfully, throwing the can back underhand to the student responsible. Then he began walking between the desks, offering suggestions and advice to the members of his class who needed them, and encouragement to those who were getting on just fine.

""Nice job Mr Nguyen, did I remember to mention there's five points to the student who manages to collect the most trash?" he asked casually, eyeing the rapidly, growing collection of cans lined up on the boy's desk. Ilya, on the other hand seemed less eager to begin. Ricky suspected the questions were more to stall for time so he wasn't going to be the first one to try the task, but it would be helpful for the rest of the class to hear his answers, so he didn't mind. "Once it's all separated out, I'm going to transport it to a no-maj recycling place, yes" he said, speaking loudly enough that the students - several of whom had paused in their efforts to listen - could hear "and while you could technically use accio, you would either have summon each can by description, which would mean you needed to touch the trash - not a great idea if it's dirty - or risk having a dozen cans all come flying at you at the same time - also not a great idea. This way, you've got a much greater degree of control and, as I said, eventually you'll be able to separate out a large collection of things very efficiently. Give it a try..."

A loud clattering sound interrupted his explanation and Ricky was ready to chastise a troublemaker...but no. His gaze alighted on one of the youngest class members who was clearly torn between apology and amusement. "Well done for getting the spell to work...but maybe try with a smaller paper to begin with?" he suggested to @Ryleigh Katō "and I'm sure you're going to help pick those up" he added in a tone that assured her she wasn't in trouble for the mistake. "Nice job there" he addd quietly to Isis who had already collected a couple of pieces of paper and was already trying for more.

He let the students continue until most of the pile had diminished then walked back to the front of the room.

"Alright, great job everyone, that's it for today" he said, clapping his hands to attract their attention. "Leave your trash on your desk - I'll bet you never expected to hear a professor tell you that - and homework is to write a page on your experiences with this spell and - you'll be please to hear this, Mr Denisov - compare it to Accio" he paused, and smiled. "Once you've collected your belongings together, you can leave. See you next week."

[OOC: Feel free to post your students leaving for extra FPP points. Thanks folks!]

Adam loved it when people called him Mr. Nguyen, like he was an adult or something. Nine in ten times, they mangled the pronunciation, but it was still hilarious -- he’d always been Adam (or Adam N.) at no-maj schools, since he’d always had at least one other Nguyen in his class. It was so stuffy of wizards, he thought. Like they were all British or something. He’d learned years ago in some extracurricular that Ilvermorny had been founded by posh British immigrants; sometimes it really showed.

Of course, he didn’t really care that much about house unity, but he did like to win things, even though his call-‘em-and-crush-‘em technique meant that he was doing this at about half the speed he could have been if he were making can pyramids instead, like Joaquim was doing three feet away (there was only so much fun you could work into a class you’d sat in before and didn’t really enjoy in the first place) or if he were summoning something smaller. The cans were starting to take up most of his space; sooner or later he’d have to start stacking them.

It would be later, though -- a sheaf of newspaper flopped straight toward him and scattered his cans -- Adam jumped out of his seat -- “Oh, come on --” but managed, upon spotting that kid from camp goggling across the room at him, not to swear.

He was too lazy for this Separara Bullshit now, so he just swept his wand in a little arc: “Accio my stupid crushed cans,” he said irritably, and somehow that worked -- they zoomed back at him from where they’d scattered and piled untidily on his desk; he spent the rest of class ignoring the larger pile and carefully redoing his neat can formation.

Leave your trash on your desk -- thank God -- Adam snatched his things up from under his desk, did his best not to upset his cans, and dipped.

[out]

"Yes! Wasn't it awesome?" Isis whispered back, delighted "that story about -" she broke off with a quick gasp as the lesson began in earnest. There would be time enough to introduce herself properly later.

The spell was fun, and after she'd got it right once she felt more confident in trying again with a bigger piece of paper. Not so Ryleigh, who apparently was going for the biggest thing she could see. Isis opened her mouth to say that probably wasn't a good idea but already the paper was moving, swooping towards her desk...and then straight past it and causing Adam Nguyen's collection of tin cans to scatter across the floor. Naturally, Isis began to dart forward to assist with collecting them up, but Professor Cortes was on hand to deal with the situationso her help was unnecessary. Almost disappointed, instead the professor's' encouragment meant she redoubled her efforts with the crumpled paper. She was just wondering if maybe she could try separating out some of the plastic - that seemed to be the least popular trash item - when the lesson ended.

Well, she wasn't going to win any prizes for quantity, but at least she'd mastered the spell decently. Isis giggled at the suggestion of leaving trash on the desk as she packed her things away, thinking she might just do her homework before dinner tonight and get it out of the way. "See you at lunch?" she asked Ryleigh as she slung her bag over her shoulder and left the room.

[out]

Professor Cortes was a funny guy, Ilya thought to himself. A wizard who brought trash he had made students sort to a no-maj recycling place seemed quite weird. Wasn’t there an easier way for wizards to recycle things, too? Did professor Cortes have to leave it to the no-majs? Well, it wasn’t like Ilya really cared.

He leaned back comfortably on his chair, toying with his wand a little as he listened to what else their teacher had to say. His explanation why accio wasn’t useful made sense and it was mildly disappointing. While he liked professor Cortes in general, he liked to try and outsmart his teachers when he got a chance. This time, however, the professor was definitely smarter than him. Well, Ilya was used to this kind of disappointment.

Sitting up straighter again, Ilya began to use the spells that professor Cortes had taught them with only little enthusiasm. It worked okay, though. He wondered if his parents used these spells at home at the hotel. He had never observed this but he couldn’t be sure. After all, there were so many things more interesting than to watch his parents tidy up the place.

When professor Cortes announced the end of the lesson, Ilya’s pile of trash had nicely grown and single items were already threatening to fall off the pile. He forced a smile on his face when he heard his name mentioned as the teacher told them their homework. “Great,” he muttered, his voice lacking all enthusiasm.

He quickly packed his bag and made a beeline for the exit. “Bye,” he said as he passed professor Cortes.

[out]

“Well done for getting the spell to work... but maybe try with a smaller paper to begin with? And I’m sure you’re going to help pick those up.”

Ryleigh sighed softly, but not in defiance. Properly chastised (albeit very kindly), she began to make her way over to Adam’s desk – but stopped short when he gathered them all with a single sweep of his wand. Huh – well, that made things easier for her, she thought to herself with a shrug. She had a feeling the older boy probably wouldn’t want her touching his cans, anyways. He seemed cool enough at camp, if not a little dramatic, judging by his reaction just now – but she liked the edginess.

Dropping back into her seat, she followed Mr. Cortes’s recommendation and tried for smaller pieces of paper – for all of about two minutes. Either her target wouldn’t budge at all, or it would land right where she didn’t want it to. After about the fourth time, her focus slackened considerably and she turned to folding what scraps of paper she did collect into paper airplanes.

When the lesson concluded, Ryleigh wrote down the assignment in her planner (she wasn’t very organized so her mom had bought it for her in hopes that she’d use it) and had just started to pack up when Isis said something to her.

“See you at lunch?”

“Yeah, see you!” she replied enthusiastically, shoveling the remainder of her stuff into her bag. Adam was long-gone already; she debated on tracking him down to apologize again, but dismissed the thought after a moment. It had been an accident and she’d already said she was sorry – and plus, it wasn’t like she’d broken anything that broken anything that belonged to him. Who cared about the dumb cans, anyways?

Sighing again, she hoisted her bag onto her shoulder, waved goodbye to Mr. Cortes, and followed her classmates out of the room.

[[ out! ]]