History of Magic 1PM, Monday March 15th, 2010 Classroom A balmy 48°F/9°C out on the Black Lake

OOC Reminders:
>>Assume your character is on time and present. Because we are in boats. If you have story reasons for a character being late, alert the instructor via PM (or owl, given the aforementioned boats in the middle of the lake).

>>If you are a new member/student, assume your character has been present in classes. Don't be afraid to post!

>>There are NPC students but YOU are the stars of the show!

>>Be courteous to everyone's availability.

>>Above all, FUN!! (and don't destroy the classroom and no polluting the lake, you should have gone before we left!)

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"Everybody inside? Alright shove off. That doesn't mean shove anyone off the boats, Norbert, it'll be house points and detention next if you cause anyone to spill into the drink. It's a nautical term, not an invitation to play 'Dunking Debbie'."

After all, what danger was there to first years and boats? Nothing was more traditional at Hogwarts than having the first years cross the lake on their first night of school and the worst trouble was that somebody needed to get rescued by the giant squid. So, the key thought Sissel had going into this classes excursion was that everyone still remember their boating etiquette.

Announced several class periods prior, the day had finally come for the History of Magic lesson out on the lake. Sissel, in the lead boat with a few others and one seemingly-out-of-place-but-not-really second year[1], was casting the final components to a Global Gramophone synced up with all the other ones in each of the other boats. Sissel was becoming a real 'whiz'-ard with these things given their invaluable use with all the tournament students in NEWT classes.

"Alright," Sissel began as the first year mini-fleet cruised to their eventual location on the far side of the lake. "Before we get above the underwater mer-village what can anyone tell me about the Black Lake's own merpeople colony?"

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((History lessons are joint efforts between all authors, so don't worry about having the 'correct' answer. You may look to canon or AO wiki details about merpeople for inspiration about information post-series; canon being the basis but don't worry about Pottermore proving us wrong in 14 months : P.

Also, there is no seating diagram but no more than five people to a boat, or two others in the lead boat with Sissel and Heliotrope))

1.	Helio is in the boat though I'll only post with her in certain circumstances

Aoife had remembered riding in the boat on the way to the sorting at the beginning of the first year. All of that knowledge on how to sit in a boat had been pushed aside until now. She uncomfortably sat in a boat, rocking slightly. Her small feet dangling in their small and old fashioned black shoes.

Truth be told, Aoife was not the best at History of Magic. It's true that Professor Jowd had tried to make the lessons fun, and Aoife had enjoyed finding portraits to interview, but she was just more of an outdoor person. But being outside for this class, maybe Aoife could focus for once.

'Oh!' Aoife thought as she stopped rocking. 'Let me see, mermaids...No, merpeople...I know! She smiled.

"They're Merrow merpeople." Aoife replied.

The lake was vast, deep, and everything one would imagine a proper lake to be. It had been pitch-black the night that she and her fellow first years had crossed it and she recalled her exact train of thought as they had done so in such wobbly, magical boats. I should hate to fall in, was the only comment she had come up with that evening. As the boats began to make their path, her pale blue eyes lingered upon her own reflection in the lake and the same thought once again crossed her mind.

""Before we get above the underwater mer-village what can anyone tell me about the Black Lake's own merpeople colony?"

Class had begun with such a question (after a brief tuning of their etiquette and nautical terms), bringing the ickle Ravenclaw's attention from the lake's surface to their teacher. She had decided rather early that she liked Professor Jowd; he wasn't mad, but he was a bit off his rocker. Such an entertaining fellow. What his classes lacked in propriety was redeemed by how informative they were, however trivial some of the facts might be. Still, Ravenna wouldn't dare trade him for another instructor.

One of the other students raised her hand to answer the query. Ravenna was eager to learn more already for the simple reason that she had been completely unaware of Merpeople living in the lake. How extraordinary! She felt silly not having known. It should have been obvious. Of course there were merpeople in the lake at Hogwarts! Sadly, Ravenna wouldn't be able to answer many questions about merpeople as she had never thought to research them before. The girl made a mental note to begin looking up other magical races and creatures at the library once class was over. She would have to be prepared in the future.

In the front seat of his chosen boat, Teddy sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. He'd had a stuffy nose all week and was starting to suspect that he was allergic to something that grew around Hogwarts in the spring. Still, he figured it could be worse. At least it was just sniffles.

He tucked a bit of moss-green hair behind one ear and turned sea-green eyes to listen, politely, to the professor's question. Ted was no expect on either History of Magic or magical creatures, but one didn't grow up around people like Aunt 'Mione and Luna Lovegood without picking up a few facts. So when wee Moffett spoke up from the next boat over, the answer didn't ring exactly true.

"Nah," he said. "Can't be. Merrows are Irish. We're too far north for that."  He leaned over the edge of the boat and peered down into the murky water. His imagination tried to turn the shadows under them into webbed hands like the ones on the second-year who rode with Professor Jowd. "These guys are something else. Sea-keys, I think. What I want I know is..."

His nose wrinkled, the sudden scent that invaded it cutting him off in mid-thought. Ted tried to hold the urge in, failed, and sneezed, slipping off his seat into the wet bottom of the boat. His hair grew three inches in a sudden burst, the roots coming in neon blue. The dual-colored locks now reached his shoulders and fell in messy curtains across his face.

"Aw hell," he muttered, and began searching his pockets for a hand-mirror, forgetting for the moment how strange it was to smell something burning in the middle of the Black Lake.

"I thought they were Scottish too." Aoife replied. "Or maybe the water gets colder in Scotland and they can't handle it." Aoife thought about what a Merrow would look like.

'They're the ones that look like people with fish tails right?' Aoife's thoughts were interrupted when a strange smell filled the boat. It was familiar, but Aoife couldn't quite place it. She had suddenly thought of the lights from her first boat trip on September 1st.

'Candle's burning maybe? No, that wouldn't make any sense.' She thought before she heard a splash. She looked at the boat next to them to see Ted Lupin's head at his seat on the boat. Looking at his hair, Aoife laughed.

"You look like a moss monster!" Aoife managed to say through the laughter.

For one o'clock in the afternoon on a Monday, Lexi wasn't doing too bad. At this point in the day, it should feel like the hours were dragging on and on and on. But they were out on the lake for their History class. To say that Lexi didn't enjoy being outside would be an outright lie. Every fiber in her body willed her outside at least once or twice in the day, no matter the temperature. She hated being cooped up inside, all squished up inside the walls of the castle.

She was content with being tucked in the boat, curious golden eyes peering into the murky depths. What was down there? What was really down there? She had heard rumors from all sorts of different people - most likely just older years trying to spook and trick the littlest of them all. But still! Mermaids? A lake monster! Maybe even a giant, three-eyed turtle!

Okay, she was sure that last one had been a complete joke. Mermaids and lake monsters were totally possible though.

"Wait," she piped up, suddenly glancing up from the water. "What's the difference between Merrows and Sea-keys?" She asked. Were there all sorts of different kinds of mermaids and mermen? Why couldn't there just be one kind? It would be so much easier if you could look at a mermaid and say, oh, it's a mermaid. Why did people have to go about and classify 'em all?

"Do these mermaids go after the lake monster? The giant squid? Right? I heard that somewhere," she said excitedly. "Someone said they go after it for sport!" She was smiling from a combination of imagining a merfolk-squid battle, and Teddy in the front of her boat had just sneezed and fallen off of his seat. It was rather entertaining to the easily-distracted first year.

"Selkies," muttered Roland Dylanis as he watched one of his boat-mates, a Metamorphmagus, tumble into the boat's floor and rise with longer hair, though now his roots were blue. Rou smirked at the sort of power a Metamorphmagus could command and yet seemed to have little use for in their earlier years, and yet the classmate was intriguing enough for Rou to find a seat next to him in the boat for class. Of course, he didn't really care to try any other places and he'd rather not have to sit next to Aoife Moffett for a full session and have her ask prying questions about his family once again.

His eyes shot over to Aoife when he heard her laughing at Lupin's mishap. Shaking his head slightly, Rou leaned over and offered his hand to the Gryffindor, though he seemed preoccupied with his search for a hand mirror. He elected not to try and answer the professor's question, for it seemed that the other classmates were already doing so and the boy saw no point to add his voice to the mass.

"Aren't they--" Heliotrope soon found herself shushed by Professor Jowd before she said anything about the merpeople of the Black Lake.

She went back to idily staring. One of her arms dangled out of the boat, making stroking motions along the surface, wrist submerged. All she really knew about this class is that it was for the younger spawnlings. She would have been with Obderedria and other peers in Study Hall but Professor Jowd had called for her a few days ago for her assitance, and as her own grade's History lesson was in the following period Professor Jowd said they didn't have to worry about her missing any class, thought she could spend a few minutes drying herself off afterwards.

Heliotrope was halfway out of uniform, the shirt hanging around her shoulders over her swimsuit while the rest of her clothes formed a pile in the boat. Although she was cold she wasn't shivering.

She was puzzled by the concept of 'sea-keys.' Sea-keys would not exist because there were no such things as sea-doors. There were entryways to rock huts built on lakebeds but no closable doors, no sea-locks to lock with sea-keys.

"Two points to Hufflepuff," Sissel awarded for Aoife's suggestion, although he held back his tongue to see what other students would think. Soon enough Ted earned two points for Gryffindor by countering which species of merpeople were in the lake. Sissel wan't to laugh at the 'sea-keys' mispronunciation. Although the joke was starting to snowball out of control.

"The differences between 'sea-keys' and merrows," Sissel began as Roland spoke up. "Thank you Roland, point to Hufflepuff; the difference with Selkies and Merrows come down to where they live and what they look like. Just like us, there can be humans with different skin tones and ethnicities so even though some kinds look different they're all merpeople."

The boats, which never went faster than a merry jaunt in pace anyways, were beginning to slow down. "The exact differences you're unlikely to learn until a term of Creatures, so consider this a pre-cursor. Selkie and merrow have been Scottish and Irish colloquial terms for merpeople, respectively, for many centuries. However, groups of merpeople are also called 'colonies' so what do you think that means?"

Lexi leaned over to the classmate sitting next to her. "What does colloquial mean?" She was clueless when it came to lengthy or intricate vocabulary words, they just didn't click in her head. Which also made it hard for her to learn long-worded spells with difficult pronunciations.

"Professor, does that mean they moved here from somewhere else?" Lexi asked, trying to recall what they had read before, and anything that Alice had ever blurted on those random occasions that she just felt Lexi needed to know something useless. Well it wasn't useless now! "So, they wouldn't have started off here, just sort of relocated from wherever they used to live?"

It made sense to her. The colonists that had settled in the United States had relocated from Britain, and they lived in 'colonies'. So, maybe the merpeople were living in some other water somewhere else, and now they were in the lake?

"Colloquial." Alice said. "Ordinary language, like, saying bike instead of bicycle." She whispered back, then directing her attention back to the front. She had been rather quiet through the lesson, realizing that she should let other students have some answers sometimes. She didn't mind not having to answer everything constantly. This lesson was interesting, and rather strange, how she had been reading books about merpeople only a few days ago on one of her big book binges.

She couldn't help but smile as Lexi blurted out a fact about colonization. She knew she had taught the cousin that fact, and it made her feel rather special to know that the words didn't lie on dormant ears. "Colonies can also refer to a group of people or creatures that share similar characteristics or are the same creature, and build physical homes together. Do they form physical colonies, Professor?" She asked, feeling quite smart in that moment.

She had a small notebook in her pocket for any information that she wanted to take down. She liked having the freedom of writing whenever and wherever she was. It was a small mosleskin notebook that her bother had sent her last month. It fit nicely in her pocket, and she used it constantly. That an pen she was always armed with.

Since the day's History of Magic lesson was to take place on the lake, Mike had to quickly remember his boating etiquette. Just as with their first boat ride to the castle months previously, he didn't want to fall into the lake. From what he heard from other students, there were a variety of creatures in the lake. Some were dangerous, and some were not. Some even sand songs. But, he wasn't exactly skilled in creatures to really know much about any of that.

Sitting in the back of Ravenna's boat, Mike listened intently as a small discussion already started about the lake's merpeople. Apparently, the class was going to include a brief discussion of creatures so far. Considering his lack of knowledge on any creatures at all, he figured that it would be best to stay quiet.

But, his curiosity got the better of him. Which one of the lake's creatures sang? Or was it a complete myth older years told younger years to make them ask stupid questions? He had no idea. There was only one way to find out ... shame it was at the wrong time.

Not too long after Alice asked her own question, Mike was already blurting out his random question. "Professor, do merpeople sing?"

Ted's search for his handmirror was interrupted by the appearance of -- a hand. He blinked at it, then followed its arm up to the face of a Hufflepuff boy he vaguely recalled as being named Dylanis. Ted grinned at the shier boy and accepted the hand up. "Thanks."

His pants squelched funny as he settled back on the seat. As Professor Jowd elaborated on the difference between merrows and sea-k-- selkies, Ted retrieved the mirror from his pocket and peered at his new swath of blue hair among the green. He scrunched up his face, green color bleeding out from his roots until his hair returned to an even shade. He checked it over once, moved to return the mirror to his pocket, and stopped. Was it his imagination, or had he spotted a shadow sitting on the shore?

Ted turned, craning his body for a glimpse of the dock they'd just left. There was nothing there. Shaking off the odd feeling of deja vu, he turned full front again and focused on the questions directed to their teacher. With nothing of his own to add he sent Dylanis a grin. "Pretty cool, huh? All these webby blokes hanging out in the lake all this time. Never would'a thunk it, if I hadn't heard the stories back home."

It wasn't long before Roland realized just who it was he was talking to. In fact, the boy mentally chastised himself for not realizing it when Metamorphagi were so incredibly rare to begin with. But looking at the boy right in the fact and Rou realized that he was talking to none other than Ted Lupin, the godson of Harry Potter himself! After all the stories Rou had been raised on growing up, hearing the legend and being pushed to live up to it by his grandfather, it was quite a shock to finally see that man's godson exchanging pleasantries.

Rou briefly didn't catch that Ted was making conversation with him and briefly stammered as he struggled to come up with a response.

"Um," he began, "yeah, I guess. Then again, I don't think anyone really understands that there might be those who can...think like people. I doubt anyone really thinks about stuff like that until they either meet such a creature or...I dunno, maybe their parents tell them about it not as a bedtime story?" Rou shook his head before turning his head away from Ted, instead opting to look into the water off of the boat's starboard for any possible signs of selkies.

Hiding among the students in the boats was the selectively mute red-head. Almost immediately after they had got in the boats, she had removed her shoes to reveal her clean, bare feet. What was the point of having shoes on if you weren't going to walk? Her eyes, green today with its usual star-burst, gazed thoughtfully at the water's surface. She wasn't paying any mind to the conversation at hand between the other girls about... What was the word? Coloquiet? Collick? That mind-boggling word they were using to describe the lifestyles of merpeople.

Faye had never met a merperson before, but her elder cousins (and even some of her aunts and uncles) had mentioned that there was a group living in the lake. They didn't go into further detail. Pity; she could've used with knowing some of the information. Not that she would have made any use of it, of course. Everyone knew Faye didn't talk, especially not during classes. Even some of the teachers that hadn't packed up and jumped on the first broom out of Hogwarts were starting to catch on...she hoped.