HOGWARTS STUDENTS » BONHAM, ALIX » KAMINSKI, MARLON » LAWSON, EMILE » MATTHEWS, LUCY » MCGEE, ALEXANDRA » SHARE, DESSA                                         » HUNTER, ALICE » LOTUSORDER, ANNETTE » GRIEVES, BETHANY » POSADA, MERCADES » POSADA, RICO » ROSE, BLOSSOM Class starts at 2PM. Feel free to ask questions! The astronomy classroom has now been remodelled to be 'indoors' (see post for details) and have windows that look outwards into an animated  image of space, similar to the Great Hall's ceiling enchantment. At the center of the room is a large sphere that is being used as a projector; underneath is the old armillary sphere. Desks are arranged in a circle around this globe and two alcoves (southwest and northwest) have small fireplaces to heat the room, which are raised slightly above the floor with steps leading to them.

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He was slowly getting used to being a horse. Keyword being slowly.

Tapendra had been the unfortunate receiver of a Hag's ire the day before; her spell had quite neatly transformed him into a small flying horse, only a bit larger than a Great Dane. He'd been getting used to flying, and was starting to find it somewhat easy.

The previous day of classes had been a nightmare; of course, today was going to be just as bad. Yesterday, the children had at least known him from last year; today, these kids were new. They'd never seen him as...not a horse. They'd think he was a bloody horse. Merlin!

He tried not to focus on this as he cleaned the classroom for their arrival. The Astronomy tower was a large, circular room, surrounded by huge arching windows. Normally, these windows were the arches leading to the battlements outside; with the cool wind that today had summoned up, however, they were now sealed with the windows. The windows were enchanted now not to show the outside of the tower, but to show Earth far below - giving the illusion that the classroom itself was in orbit.[1]

Two alcoves sprung off to the north and the south; in the north sat his desk and a small office like set up, and to the south -

Well, the south was usually a small space fr studying and reading; bookshelves lined the alcove walls on both sides and ringed the classroom on the small walkway above the classroom proper. Usually the south alcove had a few couches in it; now, it was walled off with a heavy curtain. Behind it sat his...his stall, more or less. But it was hidden. And Tapendra wasn't going to take kindly to prying.

The center of the classroom was dominated by a huge globe, which stood at 6 feet tall and just as wide. It was a projector of sorts; usually used to show visual aids, it now just had a spinning version of Earth in it, so that a small version of the planet seemed to be floating in the center of the room.

The chatter of voices greeted him from below, the Astronomy tower being accessed by a short turning stairway. He fluttered off the ground, his wings carrying him to the top of the globe, where he perched atop the planet. This created an odd effect as the planet spun below him, but he didn't turn with it.

"Take your seats quickly and quietly, please," he said as the children arrived, as officially as he could muster.

1.	The window image next to the rosters will always reflect what the in-game windows show.

Alice walked into the classroom and her eyes immediately went to the window. Space. She thought as she smiled. She chose a seat that had a good view of the projector. She wanted to be able to pay attention and take good notes.

She looked forward to this class, as she had a simple philosophy. Always look up. She was always amazed by the sky. By the sky, by ceilings, really anything else you see when looking up. She always believed people were too pessimistic these days, so "Always Look Up" could also stand for something like that. Alice liked to be happy and make others happy as well.

Alice sat down, thinking her teacher was absent. But then again, she had heard his voice. She looked forward and saw a horse. Like, a horse that runs around in grass and stuff.  Execept this once flew. Or, well. It had wings. It was blue and black striped. This was quite different than what she was expecting. Then she realized. This was her teacher.

Her teacher was a horse. A flying, blue and black striped, horse.

That afternoon Annette ran up the stairs of the tower and opened the door. Alice was the first on there, obviously. Annette plopped down next to her. Alice seemed to be looking at something behind the teacher's desk. Annette thought it was just on of those Alice things.

The room was fantastic! Every where you looked, stars, planets, meteor belts, and comets streaking across the sky, disappearing as quickly as they came. The giant model of earth sat right in the middle rotating on it's access, as earth does. Space was fantastic. When Annette used to go to Muggle schools, Astronamy was her favorite subject. She was utterly fascinated.

When done looking around, she noticed that the teacher was not present and Alice was still staring at the teacher's desk, craning her neck over to get a better look at whatever it was. "Whatcha looking at?"

Alice had yet to notice Annette join her.

"Whatcha looking at?"

Alice jumped out of her skin. "Oh my God, Annette. You scared me." She registered her question and lowered her voice. "I think that may be the teacher," She said quietly. "I could have sworn it was the teacher's voice that came from it." Alice had just realized how vague she was being. "The teacher," she started. "Is a horse. A blue and black striped horse." She made a motion with her hands moving them up and down slightly. "With wings," She said quieter than before.

"The teacher is a horse... Now that's a new one" Annette said boldly. She wondered why. She looked where Alice had craned her neck, and low and behold, a tiny pony, with blue and black stripes, and wings. If the little horse really WAS Professor Trishna then she would like to prove it.

Nette cleared her throat, "Um, Professor Trishna? Is that you?"

Blossom was grateful to finally be at the top of the stairs.  He wasn't used to this much activity and his legs ached from all the walking and stair climbing he'd done today.  The only bad part was that eventually he would have to go down those same stairs. 

He didn't recognize the view from the window.  If somebody had asked him, he would have said that the world was flat but he wasn't sure what happened when you hit the edge or, for that matter, where the edge was.   But then if he'd known everything, he wouldn't have been attending Hogwart's.

He paused before taking his seat, mainly because the instructions had come from a dog sized black and blue zebra striped pegasus.  He was beginning to wish that he had a pet because it seemed that many of the students and several of the professors had them.  Sandusky had the white faced monkey.  Trishna had a blue and black striped flying mini-horse.

That certainly trumps a white faced monkey.

Dessa dragged herself through the door of the Astronomy classroom and leaned against the wall, breathing heavily. The climb up the many stairs had been exhausting, and it seemed that no matter how often she ran around this school, she could never get used to it.

Finally catching her breath, Dessa looked up from her shoes to see Alice, Annette, and Blossom all staring incredulously at a small winged horse. She looked around for the teacher, but he was nowhere to be found. "Um...guys? What's going on?" she asked. The little horse was actually adorable. Dessa moved closer, wondering whether patting it on the head would be advisable.

They weren't laughing. They would be soon, he felt. He just knew it!

The two girls who'd been first to arrive, the Hufflepffs, seemed more curious than anything. Tapendra hadn't been expecting this air of quiet curiosity. Perhaps this boded well; if they were this respectful over this, they were miles ahead of the 2nd years in terms of maturity.

"Yes," he said, when they asked if it was him. He stood up on the top of the globe, having finally gotten the hang of it; below his feet the Earth turned. The globe was at the center of the classroom, with all the desks in a circle around it; this meant it gave him a good view of all of them. He looked at the children as they gathered, his wings extended to balance him.

"Before you ask - yes, I am Professor Trishna, and no, I am not usually a horse," he said, without a drop of humor in his tone. "As for why I am currently a horse, it is best classified as misadventure."

He sniffed, trying to keep up his facade of not being about to hide behind his desk. "If you could all introduce yourselves, that would be wonderful," he said, with a bit more of his usual sunniness. "Perhaps your names and what topic you're most interested about learning in this class?"

"Blossom Rose, Slytherin,"  he blurted out, his mouth hanging open.  "I'm sorry professor, I thought you were a pet.  I mean, I wasn't expecting... nevermind," he finished lamely, turning quite red.

"I'd like to learn more about using the stars to find answers to serious problems."

Dessa considered for a moment, then plopped eagerly into a seat. Horse teacher? So what? As long as he was nice, and fun, what did she care? She'd been at this school for less than a week, and she was already growing accustomed to this kind of bizarre occurence.

Dessa was extremely excited for astronomy. Her father had owned a telescope, and one of his hobbies had been dragging the old thing out from the attic on particularly clear nights, and pointing out the constellations to her. She raised her wand, and smiled broadly, "Hi, I'm Dessa Share. I'm really excited about...well about the whole class actually. But particularly the constellations, and how their movement can supposedly affect what goes on here on Earth. It's almost spooky." she wiggled her fingers in a bad-horror-movie sort of way for extra effect.

"I'm Annette Lotusorder, Professor and my brother, James, he was here a while ago, he wants to be an Astronomer, I'd also really like to learn more about comets"

This stuff came easily to her, the Lotusorder children, had a love for the stars, and moon, and space. Ever since James' 10th birthday, they would stand on the dock all night during the summer, looking for shooting stars, and observing the moon cycles. Those were happy memories with James, not when he was teasing her nonstop, or completely ignoring her.

Space and the sky, brought happy memories of warm summer nights laying on the roof of the house and sleeping under the stars.

His wings and ears drooped just a tad at the mentions of Divination. Oh well; he should have expected that. But they weren't falling over giggling. Perhaps they just assumed this was normal for Hogwarts, which it...sort of was, really.

"Glad to meet all of you," he said, perking back up and trying to ignore that one of the students thought he was a pet. The boy had lied about his name, too, but he'd find out what his real name was soon enough, he figured. Not even Collins would call himself Blossom Rose, though. Hrm. A new troublemaker, then.

"We'll be covering all of that, to some extent," he said, crossing his front legs on the globe. "Though those of you who are hoping to find out about how the Constellations effect us will be a bit dissapointed, I'm afraid. The proper study of such things is in Divination, not this class." He decided not to mention how own thoughts on the subject, which were best summed up as suspestitious bollocks. The interesting things in the Constellations were the stars themselves, not human wishful thinking! "We study the stars themselves, not their perceived effects on our futures or personalities."

"That said, this first class is really going to be me trying to get to know all of you," he explained. "As you have no doubt been encountering, Hogwarts is a place where many of you know the curriculum ahead of time, and just as many have no clue what Transfiguration is supposed to even mean. This is especially notable in this class and in History of Magic, as I'm sure you've all found."

He sniffed, considering how to put this next bit. "I could split you into groups by blood, which I will not do; however, we'll be finding this is a class where Muggleborns have a headstart. As many of you born and raised in the wizarding world will quickly find out, wizards have a fairly limited understanding of the workings of the universe."

"Now then - I'm going to state a term. I'd like one of you to define it, and if you don't know what it is, tell me. Let's see...can any of you define Plate Tectonics?"

Dessa raised her wand. "Isn't it the study of the movement of the plates that make up the Earth?" she answered. She wasn't entirely confident of her answer, but she didn't want to seem unsure of herself, so she smiled widely.

Annette raised her hand after Dessa, "The lithosphere is broken up into tectonic plates. In the case of the Earth, there are currently seven or eight major (depending on how they are defined) and many minor plates. The lithospheric plates ride on the asthenosphere. These plates move in relation to one another at one of three types of plate boundaries: convergent, or collisional boundaries; divergent boundaries, also called spreading centers; and conservative transform boundaries. Earthquakes, volcanic activity, mountain-building, and oceanic trench formation occur along these plate boundaries."

Annette nodded "Or so I'm told..."

Blossom's mouth fell open again.  Litho-what?  Convergent who? He was completely lost.  When he'd heard professor Pony say that Muggleborn would have an advantage, he'd suspected that somehow he'd ended up in Muggle Studies rather than astronomy.  Now he was almost certain.