Your student has already arrived, unless you PM me to arrange to arrive late (with consequences), thanks.

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It was the last day of lessons for all years until the examinations began. Not only that, it was the eve of the final task of the Tetrawizard Tournament. The first years were understandably in higher spirits, though the professor didn't quite share their optimism. He had been focusing very much on drilling the seventh years for their exams in the following weeks, and the chosen champions in a wide variety of possible foes that could come up in their final task. The odds were on that it would be reminiscent of the Potter-era tournament, but either way, none of the previous tasks had been a walk in the park.

Conserving his mental energy that morning for more important things then eleven and twelve year olds, Professor Storm had taken the surprise move in indulging in a topical lesson. The buggers could exercise that overactive imagination they employed to deviate from the topic, and engage their knowledge to date of the weird and wonderful dangers of the magical world. For some of them that was twelve years, and for others only a year or so as their introduction to the magical world had come with a visit from one of the Hogwarts team to explain their letter, and what they were.

The desks were not in their usual lines, but were instead clustered into groups so they made a table between them. The top of each held a copy of a map a metre or so square, parchment, and excerpts from one of the many (often unauthorised) biographies of Harry Potter, and well-loved copies of Hogwarts, a History which included the chapter on the tournament. More than enough fodder, though he anticipated their imaginations might run riot without the sources.

Once the students were in their groups sat around the tables, he introduced the task for their lesson.

"Tomorrow will be the final task of the Tetrawizard Tournament, where five champions from each of the schools will face a final challenge. We have discussed in previous lessons during the year what the Tetrawizard Tournament is, and the challenges that champions have faced, and this morning you have a task in your groups relating to the tournament.

"You recall that when the tournament was a Triwizard Tournament here at Hogwarts, the final task was a maze on the quidditch pitch, and within the maze the champions not only had to navigate the pathways, but also fight against dangers and puzzle their way out."

He stepped forward amongst the tables and used his wand to raise the map on the table of the least behaved students, lingering to keep them on topic.

"These maps are of a maze space which you must design as a group and decide which challenges to place within the maze. You are, as a group, the task designers." There was a rumble of excitement amongst some of them. "You must use your knowledge of beasts, spells and dangers and may draw influence from the Triwizard Task - you have several sources of information from them to help. Then you will have two minutes per group to explain your version of the maze task to your classmates. You may begin."

By this time in the end-of-term preparations, young Frank Sellaphix was a wreck! He'd put upon himself far more stress than any 10 year old should when it came to school.  He had nothing to worry about, however he'd frankly prefer a deadly maze to the monster that he'd built final exams up to be!

He was all about blank stares and fidgeting when he arrived at Defense class and listened to Professor Storm's task for them that day.  It had nothing to do with studying for exams! In a panic, he thrust his hand in the air and spoke before being called on.

"Sorry! I'm sorry, but is it okay if some of us study for the final instead? I'm sorry, but this seems fun and all but, shouldn't we be studying?"

His voice squeaked a little with worry! He felt he might die on the spot if he didn't get one last chance to review all they'd learned this year with Professor Storm at the ready to coach them if need be.  A fun-packed, imagination-intensive group project seemed like torture!

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Only Frank thinks so! I'm looking forward to having him bend his mind to the task. ^^

A Sellaphix, suggesting study? The Professor was on the one hand heartened to hear that Frank was ready to knuckle down on revision, but on the other hand did not like the boy questioning his plan for the final morning's lesson.

"Sellaphix, your revision should be more than adequate outside of these lessons," the Professor explained, his tone and the frown on his face conveying the serious nature of that statement, "if you feel unprepared than it is your fault alone, and I will enjoy picking holes in your knowledge in the upcoming weeks. Now, focus on the task," he dismissed the student with a simple hand gesture before slipping away his wand, "which if you had half a braincell you would have recognised as revision."

Frank sighed deeply and shifted back round in his chair following Professor Storm's sound rebuke.  He was too miffed to crumple at a sour word from a Professor.  He set his jaw and prepared to endure childish time-wasting (not really mature enough to see the activity as an opportunity to apply all the knowledge they'd gained over the year.)

At his little desk clump, he slid over the map.  Their section of the maze consisted of one path that wound through, and two dead ends, so it looked like they could put together a couple of punishing obstacles. 

"I don't even know what to put," he said grumpily.  "A horrible monster seems too obvious.  Maybe something invisible? Make them use magic to reveal the way through?"  They had learned some spells this term about revealing Dark Magic, so perhaps that would be clever...

Frank sure was an odd one. A boring review session or interesting class project? For Ted, the choice was a no-brainer.

While waiting for the Ravenclaw to return to their desks, Ted perused the selection of book excerpts. He chuckled a bit over their ridiculous color commentary before selecting all the ones written by Rita Skeeter and blithely shredding them with quick Lacero charm.

"I always liked the one that makes everything turn upside-down," he said, chucking the resulting parchment confetti into the nearest waste-bin.  "Only we should make it so it lasts a longer time and switches positions a lot, to make it really tough. Like, you walk into the area and bam!" He jerked suddenly to the left, bumping shoulders with the student sitting there. "Suddenly you're stuck on the wall. Everything's all right except you're walking on the edge and you can't get back down. So you take a few more steps and whoops --"

He went the other way this time, tipping until he nearly fell out of his chair. Messy, moss-green hair spilled out from behind his ears and into unnaturally orange eyes.

"You land on the other wall! So you've got to pick yourself back up and make it just a little further, then everything goes upside down for a while, and then you finally get out. Only..."

He jabbed his finger at the path, indicating a spot just around the bend from one of the dead ends. "We put it right here. So if you make it through without losing your lunch, you wind up in a dead end. Do it all over again or give up the ghost. Ooh! Maybe we could add a ghost too. Like the Bloody Baron. Or Peeves."

Aoife listened intently as Professor Storm explained the task for today's class. As he explained, Aoife's bored expression slowly grew into a bright smile. Her feet wiggled in her black shoes in excitement. When she heard Frank's frantic tone, she gave a small groan before opening up Hogwarts: A History flipping to the chapter about the Triwizard Tournament.

"Frank, relax. You'll do great on the exams, you're a Ravenclaw." She said, looking up from her book to smile at him. She then turned to Ted as he began to explain his idea for a maze like task.

'Wow. He's really good at this. What should I say...I know!' Aoife grinned.

"I have an idea too! We could have a maze, but every ten minutes something new is happening! It'd be like first there's a giant rainstorm, we can get Sky Demons to make one. Then we could have a swarm of Boggarts, only I don't know if they can form a swarm..." Aoife paused.

Frank laughed at Ted's energetic suggestions in spite of himself, and joined in the mimacry of having gravity randomly shifting on him.  "That's brilliant! They'd be all 'bwaah!' 'pssh!' "fwaaahhhh!'" 

Then Aoife was suggesting things as well, and he reached for quill.  "We have to write this down!"  It seemed the worried Ravenclaw's fears had been tabled for the moment, thanks to his eager friends and their apparently villainous imaginations. 

Frank began to make annotations on the  map of their dastardly ideas.   "Fluc..cuating...grav...ity...giant...storms...sky...demons..."

"OH! A tripwire that shoots you with arrows!"  He mimed an arrow hitting him in the chest.  "Thuck! Unnngh!"

This was a test that Linus was actually excited about. Brainstorming tasks for the champions just sounded fun, even if Frank had his nargles in a bunch about it.  Still, he thought it was mean that Storm implied that Frank had less than half of a brain cell. Linus wasn’t sure what that meant, but it didn’t seem nice. He narrowed his eyes at the professor. He was going to get what was coming to him for being so rude to his friend.

To be fair, this class was going to get some sort of disruption whether Storm deserved it or not.

Linus wasn’t really listening to what his peers had to say as far as the maze went.  He instead, said loudly—“A whole pack of hippogriffs, with giant toads on their backs that shoot out fire!” Linus grinned devilishly, “Or one of these!” He rather dramatically pulled a tongue-twisting gas grenade out of the pockets of his robes.  Without any sort of hesitation whatsoever, he pulled the pin. A silvery gas started spraying out of the canister. Linus inhaled it deeply and then threw the grenade towards Storm, and it puffed up into a giant cloud of smoke that began to fill the room. [1]

"A woogieowl?! Esquire!" Linus exclaimed, pleased with himself.

1.	The gas, if inhaled, causes people to mix up words or spatter nonsense. They know what they want to say, but the words do not leave their mouths without ridiculousness ensuing.

Aoife was quickly scribbling details on her maze parchment. "Arrows would be wicked too! Well, unless they hit you." Aoife turned to the professor.

'Agh, I hate asking him things...Oh well, I'm not going to fail this class because I didn't want to ask something.' Aoife thought before asking,

"Professor Storm? Say we want to do something like magical arrows, are we allowed to make something that could really kill the...the com-pet-titors." Aoife then felt her face flush up, as she had trouble pronouncing the last word. Her embarrassment was quickly forgotten however, by Hughes throwing some type of-

'A bomb?...A bomb!' Aoife's eyes widened when it started to spew more smoke. 'Does that mean it'll explode? Can Hughes even bring something that dangerous to class? He's only a first year...'

Ted nodded enthusiastically at each of his classmates' suggestions, but at the mention of boggart swarms he paled. Metamorphmagic exaggerated the effect until he ended up as white as the chalk on the board.

"They can swarm," he muttered, looking rather like he might be ill.[1] He shuddered. "That's not...I think that'd be a bit much for even the Ministry to control. Maybe just a couple of boggarts. Here and there."

Thankfully, they were soon off the subject of boggarts and on to Frank's arrows. Ted nodded sagely in agreement with Aoife's fears, mind-cogs already turning in search of a solution.

"They could be charmed. Like, if you get hit, they don't actually go through you, they just make that part of you go numb. Or...ooh, or they've got a love potion in them. So when you get hit you go totally barmy for the next person you see. Imagine -- school champions trying to snog each other."

It immediately put into his mind the thought of Tante Fleur mooning over Victor Krum, or Mr. Krum going ga-ga for Harry. Ted immediately fell to giggles, the color quickly returning to his cheeks. When he lifted his head again the room was filling swiftly with a strange low-hanging smoke. Ted scrambled back in his chair. "Blimey! What the -- Linus! Are you barking bark bark. Bork. Bow-wow-wing-bing-boo. Bibbles. Squeak."

His hand went to this throat. And then he was giggling again, tickled pink by the nonsense coming from his own lips.

1.	(October 27) Where Your Fears Face You

For Dione, the class's task was...unoffensive. Like Sellaphix, she'd expected a review, but also know quite well that she didn't need one. She'd actually managed an "O" last semester and was determined to work hard as ever to keep that score perfect. Even if that meant working with a ranting, raving loony like Linus Hughes.

Since it would take too long to make her signing heard over the clatter of classmates, Dio decided first to carefully record her suggestions on parchment before showing them to the group. Everyone in her group was talking at once anyway so it wasn't like anyone noticed. She was just putting the finishing touches on her first suggestion -- which involved forcing Champions to cross enchanted hot coals in order to reach their goal -- when Hughes produced his bomb.

Smoke flooded the room. Right before she lost sight of him, Dione gave Linus a disgusted glare. Such an immature dolt. Really.[1]

She sighed and flicked her wand into a silent Ventus charm, blowing away the smoke in her immediate area. Not that it could do anything to her. But still. She made a point of blowing the lion's share directly into Hughes' face.

1.	No offense, Kelly! I <3 Linus, Dio's just a brat.

Aoife looked positively terrified! Linus didn’t want to assure her that the grenade wouldn’t explode. Or maybe she was worried about the wrath he was sure to face from the grim Professor Storm.  His classmates seemed to have inhaled the gas as well. Ted Lupin was actually, sort of—barking? And laughing. That was a good sign. Dione, however, was a total boring loser like always and glared at him.[1]

So Linus did what any mature eleven year old would do.

He stuck his tongue out at her and put his thumbs against the side of his head, wiggling his fingers like some sort of silly moose. She blew the gas towards him and Linus made a point to inhale it some more.

“Toupees on a Sunday! Kitten wars?!” Li put his hands over his mouth and doubled over with the sort of laughter that was so intense,that he was merely shaking and hardly making any noise.

1.	I <3 Dione~ I think she responded appropriately!

'This is out of control!' Aoife thought. The bomb seemed like it was never going to stop. 'Then again, do I want it to?'

Aoife coughed as she felt smoke blow into her direction. She looked and saw Dione Sayer with her wand out. Dione Sayer. Perfect at everything, except acting like a person. She was pretty, sure. But underneath all of that was a scary mind and she probably hated muggleborns too.

'Well, I think so anyway.' Aoife opened her mouth to say something to Sayer, but all that could come out was,

"Mimble birdy! Smoking fire fight quill, rainbows!" Aoife immediately shut her mouth. Her feet becoming pointed and her eyes squinting even more than usual.

Roland Dylanis had been minding his own business the entire time. He'd arrived at class early, as the chilliness of the day didn't allow him to spend any time outside by the lake like he enjoyed. Being amongst people in class was bad enough, having to answer questions for everyone to see was even worse for him.

But having to get in a group and actively participate in this squabbling mass of other children? No way would he be doing that! Instead, Roland simply sat between Ted and Dione, his head bent as he sketched a few concepts that came to his mind about the type of challenges the hypothetical Champions would be facing on a sheet of parchment. He drew upon what he'd read in Hogwarts, A History regarding the 1994 Triwizard Tournament when he was studying merfolk for History of Magic. One of the most intriguing challenges that Harry Potter had faced in that trial was the Sphinx and her riddle of the spider. Facing a few of those for the Champions would surely be a tough obstacle to surmount, seeing as riddles and logic were known shortcomings in the wizarding world.

He was starting to put his mind to thinking up a riddle when Linus, being the oh-so brilliant cad he always was, set off a tongue-twister grenade in the middle of the group. Rou coughed up a storm as the gas entered his lungs, but Dione's quick action blasted away what smoke surrounded her and the students next to her, including Roland. He knew better than to speak, in fact now he was out-and-out afraid of doing so, much like he'd been at the beginning of the year before meeting Aoife. Instead, he just looked over at Dione and smiled at her, a nonverbal thanks for clearing away the smoke.

Linus stopped laughing rather abruptly when he realized something… Roland wasn’t speaking!

This needed to be remedied.

So, Linus did what any young lion with no inhibitions would’ve done: he sprawled himself onto the table and began to poke Roland with the end of his rather knobby wand. “Marilyn! Overindulgent flibbertigibbet! Wumbo and hoopla!” How far could he go before he was stopped? Nay, he was unstoppable!

 “Cheeky, no, bear!”  Linus didn’t even know what he wanted to say. He just figured that if he pestered Roland enough, he’d open his mouth in protest and spew out nonsense like the rest of them.