NEWT Charms 5

The hospital wing staff were so lovely. They didn't have to let him in here with an entire class of students, but currently the wing was empty so they'd agreed to let him borrow one of the beds. The bed he was now sitting on, waiting for his class to arrive. He did hope they arrived. The turn out last lesson had been disappointing and this was essential knowledge for any witch or wizard.

Finally, a group of students managed to find their way up to the wing and Damon immediately began the class by stunning one of them.

He felt sorry for that poor person, but it was kind of essential to the lesson, and he doubted anyone would have let him do it if they'd been prepared.


Welcome to lesson five. Feel free to enter the hospital wing and RP your reaction to Damon stunning one of you. If you wish to be the person who was stunned, write in bold at the top of your post, before your RP, "claiming stunned student."

Breaking into a run of sorts, Athena overtook Elijah on the last leg to the Hospital Wing. She dived through the double doors and whirled around, pushing the two doors shut and pulling the latches down. She grinned to herself and turned around, bringing an innocent smirk-smile onto her face before she greeted the Professor with faux-warmth.

“Good morning, sir.” She opened smoothly, taking her bag off of her delicate shoulders. She set it down on the floor, her long, crimson fingernails brushing the fabric of the bag before leaving it be. She pursed her lips and looked around the Hospital wing, vaguely interested by the room and the service it gave. Other than that, Athena really didn’t care about the room. It was after all just another room, one that treated sick people.

At that thought, Athena made a face. She turned around when she heard the doors bang open and her eyes danced with mirth as Elijah tumbled gracelessly through the door. With perfect Pureblood grace, Athena waltzed over and caught Elijah’s hands in her paler ones. She aided him very little as he righted himself and she exchanged a smirk with him before pushing him away from her and striding back over to her bag. Elijah seemed rather put off by the whole affair and she watched out of the corner of her eye as he brushed himself down, taking off a layer of invisible dust and lint from his pristine robes.

“Well done, Krum, you almost look presentable,” she commented dryly, leaning down to take a bottle of water from her bag. She broke the seal and unscrewed the cap before drinking a little from the bottle. She was careful not to smudge the make-up she’d so carefully applied that morning and was pleased to find upon looking in her mirror that she’d succeeded in not doing so.

Athena felt Elijah brush up against her and she couldn’t quite keep the look of disdain off of her face. Elijah smirked and replied wittily, “I almost succeed you as the most made-up student in the whole school, Thea.”

At that, Athena blanched and rightly so.

Then of course, the Professor cast the spell. Athena side-stepped the oncoming hex and watched as it took the person behind her. With a smirk she mumbled, "Oops," to Elijah and turned her attention back on the Professor.

"Should, uh, we do something about...?" Elijah gestured vaguely to the now unconscious person and shrugged uselessly.

(Okay, I’m just doing both of them in this post because it saves me time.)

Amelia wasn't usually one to arrive later to class, but the trip to the charms classroom and the consequent compaction spell had made her trip significantly longer. She took the steps to the hospital wing two at a time, her robes swinging around her legs and threatening to trip her, but thankfully she made it to the door of the wing without embarrassment.

Just as she was about to open the door, however, Amelia saw an ominous red glow from between the door and its frame, only visible because the door was slightly ajar. Pulling her wand from her robe pocket, Amelia took a deep breath and forced herself to open the door, holding her wand in front of her as she swung it open to find Athena and Elijah standing next to one another, Damon on the bed, and all of them looking down at what appeared to be a recently stunned student.

"I have never been so happy to running unusually late," Amelia muttered under her breath, glancing down at the student on the floor and suppressing the urge to poke him with the toe of her shoe and check that he really was out. Instead, she sidestepped the student on the floor and moved further into the room to make room for any students coming in behind her to get through the door.

You all just missed out on the 20 house points that were going to the person who got stunned. Better luck next time .

Make sure you read the Charms Class Guide before your next post.


Damon jumped off the bed and approached the student who'd been hit by his spell.

"Yes, you should," he answered. "The three of you move him over to the bed. He's just volunteered to be our test subject."

"Wands away," he added belatedly. "Depending on their injuries, levitating someone can often cause spinal damage."

I, Amelia Lyons, have read and understand the Charms Class Guide.

Before Amelia could think the action through, she was giving the professor an “are-you-insane?” look, which consisted mostly of a raised eyebrow and a facial expression that suggested that she may not have heard him correctly. Not only had he randomly stunned a student without giving him an iota of warning, but now he expected them to get him onto the bed without using their wands.

This ought to be a treat... Amelia thought to herself as she recovered from her accidental bout of wearing her thoughts on her facial features. Athena probably thought very little of her (she thought very little of anyone aside from herself), and she already knew that she and Elijah didn’t work well together. And now it seemed that their classmate’s fate relied on their ability to work together.

Here goes nothing, I guess, Amelia thought as she tucked her wand back inside her robes and pulled her hair up into a high ponytail to keep it out of her face. Despite her hesitation in doing so, Amelia squatted down next to the stunned boy, an unfortunate Gryffindor. She had already determined that she wouldn’t be able to lift the boy on her own – he probably weighed twice as much as Amelia, and was just as tall – but neither of her Slytherin classmates were making a move to help her.

“This is really more of a two-person job,” Amelia said bluntly, looking up with expectation at her classmates, though not directly at Elijah (that always ended badly), “So, you know, whenever you’re ready.”

In a sarcastic mood today, I see…

Damon quickly determined just what sort of students he was dealing with when neither of the Slytherins moved to help their classmate. Of course. Menial labour was no doubt beneath them.

He fetched a spinal board and laid it next to the prone student then knelt down next to Amelia thinking that he should be grateful that at least one person bothered to participate in the lesson.

"Come on, Lyons, I've seen you work before. If you were by yourself, you'd know what to do."

He gestured to the board.

"This is a spinal board. It's a bit like a stretcher. How are you going to use it to get him onto the bed?"

Athena and Elijah said nothing when Amelia sarcastically requested that they do something in this lesson in which all of them were supposed to be participating, which frustrated Amelia to no end. She had known when the professor asked them to work together that it was going to be challenging, but she hadn’t anticipated that the two Slytherin students would refuse altogether to even try.

When both she and the professor came to the realization that Elijah and Athena had no interest in stepping up to his challenge, Amelia would have hoped that Ambrojze would have proded them to be more useful, or deducted house points in the hopes that they would wise up and be more helpful. But instead, the dark-haired professor fetched a spinal board from a stack of them against the wall and laid it down next to the Gryffindor boy who had been the victim of Ambrojze’s unusual teaching tactics.

Amelia was already looking at the professor when he started speaking, though after hearing his words she wished she was still looking down at the student so it would be more difficult for the professor to read her reaction. Instead of demanding that Elijah and Athena be more helpful, he had instead decided that she could perform the tasks of today’s lesson by herself, despite the physical obstacles that existed against that plan of action. The Ravenclaw girl found this to be a completely absurd proposition, especially when there were two perfectly able-bodied (if not able-minded) students standing aside doing nothing. But she had already given Ambrojze an overly revealing glimpse of what she was thinking earlier in today’s lesson, so Amelia carefully kept her features in place as she pulled her mind from her ire and onto the task the professor had put her to.

I’ve got a spinal board, a 210 pound Gryffindor, and 340…. No, 350 pounds of dead weight, Amelia thought to herself, taking some pleasure in the fact that at least mentally she could taunt her Slytherin classmates, giving Athena an extra ten pounds she likely would have cursed Amelia for even suggesting.

Standing to get a better view of the situation, Amelia’s eyes darted from the board, to the bed, to the boy, her mind actively drawing lines from one to the other and trying to plan out the best course of action. The professor had said wands away, so Amelia’s usual routes of achieving this task weren’t going to be useful. She needed to think in simpler, non-magical terms, which was challenging for any wizard, but Amelia found herself almost beginning to enjoy the puzzle-solving aspect of today’s lesson.

What I really need is the right leverage… Amelia thought, looking around the room for the right object until her eyes landed on the stack of spinal boards from which the professor had taken his. Without asking for permission, Amelia went and pulled another stiff board off the top of the stack and brought it back to her workspace, only this one she did not place flat against the floor. Instead, she used the board to create a ramp from the bed to the floor, anchoring it at the base of the initial spinal board that was lying next to the Gryffindor boy.

“Here we go,” Amelia said, mostly to herself, as she squatted down again and carefully pushed the boy, starting with his head and shoulders, onto the board. She was careful to stabilize his head and neck, and then did the same with his torso and feet, moving slowly until his whole body was on the stretcher that lay perpendicular to the “ramp” stretcher she had used outside of its normal function.

All right, let’s hope this works… Amelia thought to herself as she placed herself square against the broadside of the boy’s stretcher, shifting it left and right until it was exactly bisected by the ramp stretcher. Making sure to push with her legs, Amelia placed her toes at the base of the ramp and began to push the boy’s stretcher up the incline. She was mildly surprised when the two spinal boards slid cleanly over one another, allowing her to make his ascent fairly smooth. There was a small glitch when she had to get the upper board over the straps of the lower board, and she wobbled for a moment there from the boy’s weight, but she was able to overcome the obstacle and, with a final push, the boy and the spinal board he was laying on slid smoothly onto the mattress.

As soon as he was in place, Amelia stepped back from the spinal board ramp. Without her weight at the base of the board, the board slipped down at clattered to the floor noisily, but Amelia didn’t even bother to pick it up. She was breathing a little heavier from the endeavor, but overall, she was proud of herself. She had worked out a way to do a difficult task by herself, without magic. She really couldn’t help but allow a small smile of satisfaction to spread over her features as she looked to the professor.

“Mission accomplished?” she asked, hoping to have impressed him as much as she had impressed herself.

"Very good," Damon answered. "Of course, you could also have just levitated the board instead of the boy."

Children these days. They had no lateral thinking ability.

"Anyhow, now that he's safely on the bed we can get on with the lesson. You've probably already figured out you're learning basic healing spells today. Just the things any witch or wizard would need to know around the house."

He narrowed his eyes at her. Amelia Lyons was just the sort of person who'd already have looked this all up in the library.

"So perhaps you can show the class how to wake this young man up?" he challenged.

Amelia felt her pride rise at the professor’s approval, and then immediately come crashing down as he clarified his response with what he perceived as an easier way to perform the task. Amelia was immediately hit by his disapproval, however slight, and taken completely aback by it. No professor had ever thought her in-class work was anything but exceptional, especially when she rose to a particularly difficult challenge, as she felt she just had.

Did you suddenly develop amnesia and forget that you said ‘wands away’? Amelia’s mind demanded of the professor, though she said nothing aloud. Instead, her lips were pressing into a thin, tense line of frustration. The professor had given her direct instructions, which she had followed to the letter, and then berated her for not breaking his instructions in the pursuit of her task. He had not said ‘Put your wands away if you are thinking about levitating the boy’. No. He had said ‘Wands away’, and Amelia had taken this directive to mean just what it said.

Amelia wanted to point this out to the professor and defend the fact that she was only following instructions, but her respect for his professorial authority held her tongue. Amelia hated the idea of being wrong, but more so, she hated the idea of being told she was wrong when she didn’t believe she was. If this had been anyone else, she likely would have retorted with the many defenses she was thinking, but her respect for authority was too deeply ingrained. In the same way she couldn’t talk back to her parents, she kept her mouth shut as she stared at Damon.

The professor seemed unfazed by her look of frustration and carried on the lesson as though nothing had happened. He spoke to the class at large – not all that large at only 3 people – but then turned his attention once again to Amelia, who was sulking internally at being snubbed on what she believed was an inventive performance. His look was challenging, as though he believed Amelia still had something to prove, which only served to raise Amelia’s annoyance with the situation, and before she could stop herself, there were words streaming from her mouth.

“Only if you’ve formally retracted the ‘wands away’ command,” the redhead spat at him, immediately cringing at the cocky tone she had just used with a professor. She hadn’t at all meant to say that aloud – think it, yes, but not say it – and upon realizing that she had done just that, Amelia’s mouth snapped closed and a dark blush bloomed on her cheeks and chest.

You shouldn’t have said that… Amelia’s subconscious unnecessarily informed her.

“Which you… ahem… clearly have,” Amelia attempted to correct herself after 30 seconds or so of awkward silence that may as well have been an hour from Amelia’s point of view.

The Ravenclaw moved toward the bed again, looking down at the student so at least she wouldn’t have to look at the professor anymore. She didn’t really want to be facing him when he got around to responding to her being so out of line. If Damon had hoped to embarrass her with this challenge, he wasn’t going to get his wish – or at least Amelia hoped not. She prided herself on her healing spells, as Elijah could attest to, and correcting a stun was in every healing text she had ever read.

“Rennervate,” Amelia said, waving her wand in a circular motion before pointing it directly at the boy’s chest. After a moment, the boy’s eyes fluttered open, and he was understandably distraught when the first thing he saw was Amelia Lyons standing over him with a wand.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Amelia said with a smirk, crossing her arms to assuage some of the boy’s fear that she was going to perform some kind of magical experiment on him. Professor Ambrojze would have a hard time correcting her on this demonstration.

Julia rolled off of her bed, surprised that most of her roommates were still asleep. She took her time while getting ready that morning, assuming that she was going to be on time to her Charms lesson. Once she was ready, she made her way to the classroom. As she walked in, she noticed that it was completely empty. At first, she figured that she was early for the class, and lay back at one of the desks. After about ten minutes, however, Julia finally realized that her class was in the hospital wing. If she wasn't late already, she sure was now. Julia gathered her belongings quickly and rushed to the hospital wing.

Once she arrived, she noticed only three other students in the large room, surrounding one of the beds. Julia quietly made her way across the large hall, and over to her group. "Erm, sorry I'm late, Professor." Not that the teacher wasn't used to it by now. It was rare for her to actually be on time to class. "I didn't realize that we were supposed to be here rather than our classroom."