Students Currently Attending:

Gryffindor

Erik Collins :: 6 (+2)
Charles Harcroft :: 1 (+1)
Hannah Harper :: 3 (-5) (+1)
Tynan MacFusty :: 5 (+2)

Hufflepuff

Dahlia Collins :: 1
Carter Morsely :: 1
Pax Wintergreen :: 4 (+2)

Ravenclaw

Eirene Antonopoulos :: 4
Philippa Perdue :: 3
Xander Perdue :: 1
Serenity Lee Thornton :: 1 (+1)
Cyhirae Trishna :: 7 (-5) (+4)

Slytherin

Noriko Wakahisa :: (+1)

Stoking the fire in the Defences classroom, Ignan leant in and placed a pot at the back of the fire with care not to burn himself. It was still the very end of lunch, and minutes before the bell would ring. First years, habitually tardy, would be unlikely to turn up early. He, on the other hand, was not late, but would appear so shortly.

Satisfied, the ceramic pot was lodged in the perfect position, quite invisible in the back of the fire with the flames licking around it neatly, he straightened up, giving his troublesome leg an absentminded rub. The cold weather meant it was giving him a little trouble, but nothing too drastic.

Glancing to his desk, he saw all was in order, and smirking to himself, he left the room, the door of the classroom ajar to invite the first years in. None of them were lurking in the hallway as far as he spotted, as he made his way down the corridor and into an empty classroom, within hearing distance.

In no fewer than five or so minutes time, when the first years had all assembled in the classroom, waiting expectantly for their Professor to arrive, the little pot would shatter from the heat, and smoke would pour from the fire in a most alarming manner, thick, black. It would fill the classroom within a minute like a thick fog. As satisfying as peruvian darkness powder, but a little less easy to make pass without the correct incantation.

He wasn't playing a prank as such on the first years, but rather more teaching them an important lesson. How they dealt with the sudden surprise of the fireplace exploding, and all that smoke would illustrate who panicked, and who kept their heads. Nobody would see him enter, what with the commotion, and as long as one of them didn't try to flee, running straight into him in the fog, he'd be able to recapture the enchanted smoke back into a bottle, and reveal the state of panic in the first years it hid.

Torturing first years, excellent sport.

He pulled out his pocket watch, and waited, stood just behind the door of the empty classroom opposite, listening carefully.


------
OOC: Please arrive - on time, as you would for any of the other classes - anyone can write it all kicking off, up to whoever wants to. Have fun with not being able to see….

Today was going well enough for this time of year. He still felt cooped up, but the feeling was slowly dissipating as he got more and more used to this dreary castle. Lunch had been nice enough, too. The food here was still a bit light for Tynan's usual tastes - but there'd been some good red meat served today and he was comfortably full as he meandered to the DADA room and slid into a chair, his book bag dropped on the floor with an unceremonious thud.

Professor Storm wasn't around - that was odd since the old man was usually pretty anal about them being on time. Hypocrite. Well, at least Tynan was on time and the old man couldn't get him on that account - well, he probably could find a way, but whatever. Tynan fingered his pocket knife for a moment - he was in an artistic mood and the desk was looking so barren and tempting - and instead sighed, and pulled his Herbology book out of his bag and flipped through it to some of his...well, for lack of a better word, notes.  These where usually just underlined sentences, with occation notes wrtten next to them like "iMporTEnte". He slapped a piece of parchment next to the book, glared darkly at it, and started to take what he thought of as 'proper' notes - drawings, more or less, pf the plants they had to study. Not that they where that  good of drawings, really, but he could read...well, not read. But he could understand 'em at a glance and that was what counted, right?

After a few minutes the classroom had filled and was humming with conversation - not that he'd really been paying attention. Eirene was probably upfront being...well, Eirene again.  Tynan nodded to his house mates as they filtered in, and was about to close the book when he stopped and sniffed. The air smelled like -

The pot shattered and inky black smoke began to flood the room. Tynan got a nice lungful of it before he could stop himself, and started coughing, remembering enough to get down on the floor and pull his shirt up to cover his face. His single eye watered as he coughed and cursed into the cloth, trying to look through the maze of table legs and figure out what the hell was going on.

Erik had probably waltzed into the classroom a bit before he was actually late. He had been balancing a book on his head and smiling, quite contently to himself, as he wandered through the rows of desks and murmurs. He couldn’t have been happier this month, sneaking into the Forbidden section, stealing a book, and now they were going to pull such an amusing prank—he could hardly weight. He plopped a book on his desk as he caught a look at the cauldron and cocked his head to the side.

It didn’t look right, like the wizard equivalent of leaving the stove on. Except with a giant pot. A giant smoking pot—and then it exploded.

Erik huddled on the ground just to shield himself from the explosion, over the fuss of the classroom, and then realized that smoke had flooded the room.

He let out a gurgled cough and then tried to look around, “Dahlia!?” He hacked out, and then he thought of a better idea, “Is anyone near the door?!” He couldn’t see, and he could hardly keep his eyes open through the thick smog, but everyone could still hear each other, at least as long as they weren’t screaming around like idiots.

Pippa liked to arrive early for Defense. Professor Storm was an absolutely fascinating person to study. Of course is class was right after lunch and it was so hard to leave the lake even in the dreary cold. She had been reading Sir Squidly a chapter from The Secret Garden and wishing that she could find that kind of garden around Hogwarts. She knew it had to be there, it was just a matter of exploring. Still, she tore herself away earlier enough to be the third to arrive. She wasn’t sure where Carter and Xander had gotten themselves off too. They went to explore the lagoons and she was not sure they had even left the lake yet. I didn’t matter much, she was seated near the front of the room, toying with her wand and half heartedly talking to Trudy Cromwell.

And that was when all hell broke loose, the shattering pot, the billowing smoke - Pippa’s blue eyes went wide as she covered her mouth and nose with her arm. Pranks were only fun when she got to be in on the joke. If she didn’t know about it or was caught unaware then it was not as amusing. Hitting the floor she squinted through the smoke trying to breathe. As the play was the thing for Hamlet, a spell was the thing for Pippa - the problem was she’d been neglecting her latin studies lately. Waving her free arm she crouched down to the floor - inadvertently hitting someone in their eye, “Oy!” she squeaked, as her hand made contact with the face. The yelp filled her lungs with the smoke and she started choking, but rather than removing her hand she felt the skin under her fingers, patting along to the hairline, “Carter?” she coughed again, huddling closer to whomever it was.

The professor was late, Eirene frowned, looking at the clock as she sat patiently in the front row, hands clasped on her desk. This was the first time she could remember that Professor Storm had ever been absent. That wasn't fair! He should deduct points... from himself!

After he'd snapped at her earlier in the month, she'd felt apprehensive and unhappy about Defense. The only way she got through the class now, and dealt with her peers' teasing and Noriko avoiding her like a plague of frogs, was to tell herself that inflating Noriko's bum wasn't really her fault. He hadn't supplied pillows for them! It was the professor's responsibility!

Eirene was about to let out a huff of exasperation and offer to check the staff room for Professor Storm, when suddenly, a loud pop filled the air and smoke gushed out of the fireplace, engulfing the classroom.

"Fire! Fire!!" She yelled, eyes bulging in horror until the smoke made them sting. Covering her face, she slid out of her seat and onto the floor.

Eirene fumbled for her wand on top of her desk, finally grabbing it. "Mairead! Keegan!' She screeched. "You are going to get-" Eirene stopped and coughed. "Into so much-" she coughed again, cutting herself off.

Even in a dire situation she couldn't help but blame those two for everything bad that happened. Her own coughing frightened her, however, and she started crawling around on the floor, wand grasped in one hand. Eirene thought about casting Augamenti, but she couldn't see the fire to put it out, and every other time she'd casted Augamenti, she had blown something up.

"Ow!" She whined when she bumped into someone, more out of surprise than out of any physical injury. "Move! We have to find the door!"

 Xander never quite knew what he was in for, whenever he entered the DADA classroom. It was definitely one of those classes that was full of constant surprises. And not like birthday party surprises, with cake and ice cream and presents - these were more the 'hey think fast I'm about to throw something crazy at you!' kind of surprises.

 Today, for instance. The first unusual thing that Xander noticed as he entered the classroom was the distinct absence of Professor Storm. Was the defense teacher actually late? That seemed rather out of character for the extremely strict old man, but maybe the fifth years had caused trouble in the Great Hall again. They'd been doing that an awful lot lately. So Xander took his usual seat next to Carter, waved at his cousin Pippa, and set out his parchment and quills as he waited for class to begin.

 And boy did it begin! With a BANG, something in the fireplace literally exploded, sending a thick cloud of smoke billowing into the room. Xander let out a startled, frightened shout and slid from his chair to the floor, hiding under his desk. This, clearly, was why first years should never be left in unattended classrooms. Chaos always broke out!

 After a few moments, however, the initial wave of panic subsided, leaving Xander with room to think. He immediately reached out a hand, blindly trying to make contact with some part of his twin. "Is anybody hurt?" he called out through the smoke, coughing along with the rest of the class. "Carter? Pippa? Are you okay?"

We have to find the door!, he heard Eirene's shrill voice finally saying something sane, instead of just shouting 'fire!' or flinging around accusations. The door. That sounded like a pretty good idea to Xander. He nodded, even though nobody could see him. "Everybody grab hold of somebody else!" Because when in doubt the buddy system was always a good idea. Xander certainly had complete faith in it. "Just keep crawling - cough - to where you think the -cough- door is, and if you find it give us a -cough- shout so we can find you! And -cough- stay near the floor." The air would be better lower to the ground. That's what he'd always been taught in fire safety lessons.

Cyhirae wandered into the classroom at her normal time, five minutes before class was to start. That gave her just enough time to get settled in before class got started but didn't leave her twiddling her thumbs before class started. She set her book bag on her chosen desk, pulled of her scarf and laid it on top and draped her outer robe on the back of the chair.

 Cy was in the middle of pulling out her Defense book when something in the fireplace exploded, quickly filling the classroom with thick, choking smoke. With the instinct of someone long used to absentminded people who cook, she quickly dropped to the floor coughing and blindly pulled her scarf off the desk, sending the contents of her book bag to the floor.

She squeezed her watering eyes shut and wrapped her scarf around her face, allowing her to breath. Eirene's cries of fire rose above the coughing of the rest of the students as she blindly crawled on her hands and knees, pushing aside pens and parchment, towards where she thought the door was, bumping into the occasional chair.

"Everybody grab hold of somebody else! Just keep crawling - cough - to where you think the -cough- door is, and if you find it give us a -cough- shout so we can find you! And -cough- stay near the floor." Xander's call rose over the coughing of everyone else. Cyhirae, eyes still closed, groped around for someone on her hands and knees in front of her before latching on to someone's leg. "I've got someone," she cried, voice muffled by her scarf.

"Damn! Ye bampot, thae's ma ee!"

Well, that made everything easier, didn't it? His only eye now closed, watering, hurting and firmly covered by his right hand for protection, Tynan let off another string of cursing, punctuated by coughing. Whoever the eye-fiend was was also yelling like the rest of 'em and now all snuggled up against him. And from the sound of  the voice, it was Pippa. Lovely. Oh well, it could've been Eirene.

"Dae ye ayeweys - cough- git sae coorse -cough- whan the shite gaes oop?" he snapped at her. "An' devaul - cough- haudin me doun, ye -cough- numpty, ah cannae braithe as eit is." He made an effort to struggle Pippa off him, but failed, stopping instead to cough. Being blind wasn't helping. With his free hand, he got his wand from where he kept it tucked up in his sleeve, pointing it upwards - hopefully no one was in the way. "-cough - Luminare Aperio!"

He heard, muffled by the chaos of the classroom, at least one of the high windows bang open. Good. He settled back to coughing, then grabbed Pippa's..well, Pippa, since he couldn't see. "Come doun an' airt the dour," he said, starting to feel a bit lightheaded from the smoke. "Ah cannae see tae airt it meself."

---

Translation
a. "Damn! You idiot, that's my eye!"
b. "Do you always get so violent when this shit happens?"
c. "And stop holding me down, you fool, I can barely breathe as is."
d/e. "Calm down and find the door. I can't see to find it myself."

Carter liked DADA. Okay, so wandwork wasn't his best thing but it was still more activities and hands on then a lot of other classes. Plus it's shortened form (he knew there was some fancy word for it- he just didn't know what it was) spelled Dada, and Carter LOVED his Da. They built pirate ships in bottles together. And speaking of pirate ships, Carter was wearing his very official looking eye patch over his blue eye today, even though his first mate didn't look very official piratey, but that was okay because shhhh- sometimes he and his first mate were in disguise and his first mate was his brother so he got to slide on not wearing pirate regulation gear. And hey, Carter was SOOOOO GLAAAAD he had stoked up on those Muggle energy drinks over winter break.

"HELLO FAITHFUL CREW MEMBERS AND FAMILY!" Carter proclaimed to Xander and Pippa his long-lost and happily found brother and cousin. Hey, the professor wasn't here yet. Carter bet the professor could be a pir-

ARGGGGGGGGGG.

What was this? Smoke? Smoke everywhere! Coughing smoke. Full of darkness and evil difficult-to-breathe magic. What treachery or fiendish work was this.

"TO ARMS GOOD PIRAT----ARCK!" Carter's call to arms was abruptly caught up when he tried to leap dramatically onto the desk and ended up missing because he couldn't see anything and falling on his bum on the stone floor. Owww. That hurt.

"Xander!" Carter called, flailing his arms around to try and find his twin. He heard Xander's voice and followed the sound, and launched himself with all the power of a cannonball and the clingyness of really clingy seaweed at his brother.

"CAPTAIN CALLS DIBS ON THE FIRST MATE," Carter yelled. Then his voice dropped (relatively) as he addressed Xander directly. "I think we need to prepare to be boarded."

Pax, though surprised that the class had managed to arrive before Professor Storm, had taken the opportunity to (surreptitiously) work on a Dungeons and Dragons campaign he was hoping to start running soon. He was engrossed enough that the sound of shattering clay caught him offguard; he stood abruptly, chair scraping back, and looked for the source of the noise-- well, it was hard to miss the source of the noise, what with black smoke pouring out of it and all.

For a second, Pax looked like a deer caught in headlights, then he snatched his wand up from the desk and, as per the instructions of fire safety lessons back in primary school, dropped to his hands and knees and yanked the collar of his robes up to cover his nose and mouth. He could hear the shouts of the other students, and struggled to make out what they were saying over the general cacophany; Eirene was saying they needed to find the door, and Xander was coughing out instructions about staying near the floor and grabbing hold of someone.

Pax started to feel a little relieved; there were students here who knew what they were doing. He was about to follow Xander's advice when he felt a hand on his ankle, and heard Cyhirae's muffled voice saying 'I've got someone.'

'That's me, Cyhirae,' Pax called back, as in the background he heard Tynan's thick Scottish brogue uttering a spell, and the sound of one of the windows clattering open. 'Here, take my hand,' he added, reaching back with his hand to grab hers, worried he might inadvertantly kick her if she kept holding onto his leg. With his other hand, he held his wand out in front of him. 'Lumos,' he said, and the tip of his wand lit up. It didn't do a great deal of good for seeing through the thick smoke, but at least it'd hopefully make it a little less likely for others to bump into him. Tentatively, he started crawling towards the back of the classroom, feeling out the table and chair legs for guidance.

'Eirene,' he called out, remembering she had been near by, 'are you okay? Have you got hold of someone?'

Hannah - quiet as usual, watchful as usual - had come in, sat down (NOT by the front, not in THIS class), and reluctantly pulled out a quill, her wand, and some parchment. She was expecting the usual nerve-wrackingly difficult class, which was an entirely different thing from expecting the black smoke that came billowing out from the sole fireplace.

At which point she, like every other sensible kid in the class, immediately dropped to the ground. She didn't need Xander's warning to start crawling towards the door, but she'd barely gotten a few determined paces before the smoke was obscuring absolutely everything. A few more, and she wasn't even sure she was still going in the same direction. On her hands and knees, Hannah whipped her head from side to side, long waving hair creating eddy-like trawls in the smoke currently drifting down to her level as she strained her ears to catch the yells and cries that came through the smoke.

She heard Tynan cursing nearby, and her unhappy mouth twitched briefly in a crooked smile. "Tynan?" she called, but he was yelling for someone else, and Hannah whirled on her knees away in search of someone, anyone, else. Hannah was a strong, sensible girl, but all this smoke was making it difficult to hang onto that. Her throat ached and her eyes was watering with what were not tears, she couldn't see anybody for all the black smoke and it was all making her rather... anxious. So when her groping hands scraped across cloth, she latched on to somebody's pants leg with white-knuckled fingers.

"Who's this? It's Hannah - do you - do you know where the door is?"

A muffled bang from above made her jump, her grip on the other's pants leg tightening in response. The window - good idea, spells, magic, something, right. With her free hand, she fumbled for her wand, but for the life of her she couldn't think of a spell to use. A quickly muttered incantation brought a jet of water arching away from her, cutting through the smoke like a knife and giving her just a glimpse of another bowed form, dark hair, maybe Eirene, as water splattered down. "Sorry!" Hannah called, but the smoke swirled right back into place. She hadn't been able to catch sight of the door, either. Hannah didn't know enough curses of her own to say any, but she thought briefly about borrowing some of Tynan's.

Oh well now Pippa felt bad. It was not, in fact, her cousin’s face she had hit. She had managed to poke the only good eye of the grumpiest person she knew… and now she was clinging to him and he was…well she was pretty sure he was calling him names. How rude. It wasn’t like she walked up to him in the middle of class and just jabbed her thumb in his eye. It wasn’t as though she could see either. She would have told him all that too except she couldn’t quit coughing and the smoke was burning her eyes, “Stay low cough cough the smoke wont be cough as thick”. She tried to say it loud enough for everyone to hear, but the coughing made it hard.

And then he grabbed her BUTT. She would have screamed but she was too busing coughing. She did smack his hand though, hard, with her wand. She was trying to react to everything around her and still wrack her brain for a spell. They were wizards. She used her wand for everything, she thought it was the coolest thing ever, but she could not find a useful spell in all the information stored in her brain. She was at a disadvantage here. She was brought up muggle she didn’t have all the tricks yet! Grabbing Ty’s arm she pulled him in the direction of where she thought the door was before she got all turned around. “Just quit yelling and touching my bum!” She had another coughing fit then as she tried to scoot along the floor.

"I am bidin' low," Tynan grumbled, trying to squint his eye open. He heard Hannah call his name in the din; she sounded as surprised and freaked out as the rest, which was unusual - the girl usually kept a cool head.

He unhanded Pippainstantly when she squealed about what he'd grabbed, and let out a loud bark of pain as she jabbed his hand with her wand. "Gah! Whit have ye gat conter me, lassie? It'll be my stane's next, the way yer gin'!" He snapped at her as she grabbed his arm and dragged him along the floor. His head was swimming from all the coughing; he pressed he face into his shirt again and took some deep breaths; he was not going to pass out. Keegan would never let him live it down if he did, ever. As he did, he could have sworn he heard Hannah shout a spell, followed by a splash of water and a shriek.

His head somewhat under control, he raised his voice. "Calm doun, Hannah! Jus' git tae the dour!" He raised his wand again, resting his weight on Pippa for a moment. "Luminare Aperio!" Another window opened and he could have sworn the nearby smoke thinned for a moment. He then took his weight off of Pippa with a muffled apology. "Dae ye ken a wind spell, Pippa?"

Translation
a. "I am staying low." | b. "Gah! What do you have gainst me, girl? It'll be my balls next, the way your're going." | c. "Calm down, Hannah! Just get to the door!" | b. "Do you know a wind spell, Pippa?"

"Pax,"  Cyhirae reached out and grabbed his outstretched hand with relief. She crawled up next to him as she heard him call out 'Lumos'. "I think the exit's this way," she blindly gestured in the direction she had been crawling.

She opened her eyes and quickly closed them shut again, unable to see much through her waterlogged vision. She determinedly continued crawling in the direction where she thought the door was, ignoring if Pax followed. She finally cleared the desks and hit the wall. Cyhirae stiffened as she felt someone grab her leg. "Who's this? It's Hannah - do you - do you know where the door is?"

"It's Cyhirae, Hannah." Cyhirae winced as a loud bang echoed throughout the room and Hannah gripped her leg tighter. "I don't know where the door is but we're  near the wall and we should be able to follow it to the exit."  She jumped a little as she felt something splash near her and relaxed as she heard Hannah's "Sorry."

"It's okay," Cyhirae wasn't certain if the apology was actually directed towards her but she automatically answered anyway. Cy blindly reached out behind her and grabbed what she thought was Hannah and awkwardly found her wrist. "Here," she placed the hand on the wall, "we'll just follow this and we'll find the exit eventually."

Excellent, Ignan mused as he heard the commotion begin. Counting slowly to ten, he knew the enchanted smoke would have filled the majority of the classroom in enough volume now that he could come out of hiding and walk across the corridor to the classroom door.

Stood in the doorway with an amused smirk on his face, he listened to the voices within of the first years before taking a step back and casting a ward around the door to contain the smoke. Wouldn't be good to let that escape down the corridor and cause a commotion that he had a dragon smoking up the classroom now.

Stepping back a few feet inside the door, arms folded, and wand in hand, Professor Storm waited, knowing that the most practical, resourceful ones would no doubt reach the door (and his boots and bottom of his wizard's robes which were at his ankles) in the next minute. Very curious to see who worked themselves out as the reassuring ones, and which ones panicked.