Figaro Sellaphix H - 4
Joshua Harcroft G - 2
Callum Knight S - 1
Ferguson Amherst S - 1
Sophie Flickwick G - 1
Talia Byrne H - 1



OOC: For those unfamiliar with my lessons, please post as if you have been present from the beginning, unless you have a valid, and pre-discussed plot reason for announcing a late arrival. PMing me is encouraged if you'd like me to be aware of something character significant for the lesson, ta. I don't deduct housepoints for non attendance, I do add them for participation, interesting, plot furthering or amusing IC reactions, and especially for balanced character abilities. If you can't join us, may be to your advantage to drop me a quick note.

8am, first lesson of the day.

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The OWL examinations loomed closer with every lesson. Despite himself, Professor Storm had already begun to feel a little apprehensive for his own students. For all the howlers he received from their parents, all the tears, harsh words spoken, and the detentions he issued in return, he was aiming for some of the best results Hogwarts had seen.

A self confessed perfectionist, he scoured the beautifully neat mark book which lay flat against the desktop, an auspiciously blank line for the late Ava Grosvenor. Inking his quill, he added marks for Sasha, not that the Ravenclaw attended his classes these days, the governors had put pay to that, but he still turned in his learning via owl, and Ignan drilled him through practical once a fortnight on a Friday morning, which kept him up to speed, just about.

The fifth years had managed to idly chatter, always a little quieter, with one eye regarding their Professor. He was usually attentive at the front of the class on their arrival, so sitting at his desk frowning at marks wasn't necessarily a good sign.

Getting to his feet, the classroom chatter subsided, and heads turned back to the front.

"Good morning. I spent a most interesting Sunday evening reviewing your critique of the werewolf regulations. For a handful of you, I can see you relished the task," he retrieved one student's essay from the top of the pile, which rolled out into five feet long. "whereas others of you rather wholeheartedly agree with the Ministry, only did not want to elaborate why." He picked up another, which was half a foot long at best.

"In a matter of weeks, that question could be posed to you on an examination paper under timed conditions. Whereas it is interesting to admit your lifelong friends include werewolves, its not going to achieve you any marks of consequence. Valid case studies, from multiple sources yes. As for those of you who struggled to elaborate, find yourself a voice this week, and resubmit by Friday breakfast. I am disappointed."

Rolling up the longest essay again, he added,
"Should you not be able to read my handwriting, or have any queries, do approach me at the end of the lesson." Across the room, a heavy trunk lurched and then fell silent, slightly at an angle to the wall. Eyes fell on it, and then away again. Such a lurching trunk was not an altogether unusual thing to happen within this classroom. Meanwhile, the essays sailed through the air to their relevant student author.

"Today we shall be covering an element of the written examination," there was a sigh of disappointment in the air, as they had been rather revising some of their earlier year material lately, rather than picking up their wands for a good portion of the lesson other than to recite the seven shield spells and practise one shield for the final ten minutes. "though it is rather easier to understand the topic through practical application." He finished his sentence with a hint of gladness in his tone.

"We have covered the consequences of combining two curses, and two charms before this, and the balance that must be achieved." Memories of the gruesome photographs were hopefully coming back to mind from November, "however, the practise of concurrent casting is something that is within the OWL, but tends to be overlooked and covered swiftly on the last lesson or so in no depth."

Stepping round his desk and casting aside his longer outer cloak to just his shirt and waistcoat beneath, so he was free to move, a smirk crossed their Professor's features.
"It also helps when one drinks semi-regularly with a member of the Wizarding Examinations Authority. They discuss all manner of curious topics relating to what we do in the classroom. Proof that if you keep your ears open," he tapped his wand at a student reading their friend's essay and not paying attention, so that it rolled up like a yo-yo and smacked into their nose, "you will hear all sorts of useful things."

"I will require a volunteer." He announced quietly. "With wand, and at least two functioning brain cells."

When a suitable candidate approached, he asked them to join him on the floor before the first row of desks.
"You're familiar with basic levitation spells, wingardium leviosa?" He asked them quietly, before turning back to the class.
"When something is heavy, you ask a friend to assist you to lift it. It doesn't matter if its a trunk or a dead body. If you lift it together, you share the weight. Same with spell casting." He turned to the student, "attempt to levitate my desk." It would undoubtedly be too heavy, the large frame its contents and also the fact he'd placed a weighting charm on it before the lesson began would make it impossible alone.

"See? Now, together," As if conducting the other student in an orchestra, the desk lifted a few inches from the floor when the two of them cast the same spell on the same object.
"Good, sit, another volunteer."

Figaro stood up next to Professor Storm, as his second volunteer, grinning like an idiot.  Volunteering in Defense class was like Russian Roulette - you had absolutely no idea what to expect and there was a chance you'd spend the rest of the term in the hospital hut.  But the first volunteer'd been lobbed a slow Quaffle, so Figaro felt confident he'd get his participation for the week easily.  Wingardium Leviosa? Please.

The easier the better, considering how well is 10-inch-essay about werewolf legislation had been received.  He hadn't copied the book directly, but he certainly hadn't spent much time laboring over his own opinion.  It all sounded good to him.  But if he wanted to reverse the nasty Troll sitting at the top of his thin scroll, then he'd better muster up some kind of original thought this week.

So hoping to redeem himself, or at least take  home a win, Figaro had tumbled up between the other desks to Professor Storm's side, not at all worried that Storm probably wouldn't believe Figaro had the prerequisite brain cells without a signed affidavit from Healer Nagde.

Ready to cast a firstie charm on command like the last lucky sod, Figaro faced the desk, wand ready.  "You going to count or should I just go...?" 

"You going to count or should I just go...?" 

Professor Storm gave Figaro a disapproving look for interrupting. Given the Professor was faced mostly away from the desk, not intending to demonstrate such a simple spell again.

"This is not first year charms, Sellaphix." He told the fifth year sharply. "Perhaps you should have remembered that with your essay. Demonstrate your attempt at hard shield." Seeing Figaro's expression, he hissed, "Protego Durus[1], Sellaphix?"

Testing the shield held by Figaro, it shimmered as it reflected back trivial attacks. Then, knowing he must demonstrate it failing, and then when cast concurrently with another, succeeding, he threw something a little harder at it.

"Concusso[2]." The force of it rumbled through the desks and rattled the windows, pushing a breeze of air through the classroom. The fires in the two fireplaces at either end of the classroom dipped and then licked back into life, revived with the extra oxygen. The trunk that had lurched earlier gave a more convincing rattle and battered itself back against the wall at the side of the classroom.

"It can only hold up to so much - by nature of both its purpose and also its caster. A third volunteer, to stand beside Sellaphix. We'll have to go for minimum one brain cell, fast running out of anyone with more." He added the final sentence in a less direct tone, raising his eyes as the students glanced among themselves.

1.	Protego Durus
2.	Concusso

Figaro cast a nervous look back to his audience when Professor Storm burst his bubble.  Luckily, Figaro wasn't so inept as to fail to cast the hard shield - they'd been working on that one for quite some time and it was a consistent attempt.   An ovoid, shimmering magical field formed at the end of his wand and it wavered and crackled at the spells Professor Storm cast.

It took quite a bit of focus for Figaro to keep it up, much more than he was used to applying in class, and in spite of himself and his normal goof-off act for class, he was getting into it.  His brow was furrowed in concentration, determined not to disappoint the Professor yet again. 

But the Concusso was just unfair.  With the shield between them, the Mancusian teenager didn't suffer the full wrath of the curse, but he got quite the shove.  "Hoi!" he startled as a force bucked his wand arm up into the air and hit him full in the chest.  He stumbled back rapidly, finally falling backwards onto his elbows.

Titters of laughter greeted the display, and frustrated Figaro had to smile as well.  Save face, yes, but also to shake it off.  "Yea, c'mon up," he encouraged his classmates.  "Tons of fun to be had."

Josh watched as Fig failed to fully prevent the spell. Fig might be a friend, but Josh still thought Fig needed to pay attention more. Josh was glad that he had turned in a proper length essay, though, since he didnlt like the sound of that homework, although he had needed to resist the temptation to write one ten feet long. Hey, he was a fairly avid supporter of werewolf rights. Not so avid, however, that the essay could be considered blatant advertising for the cause. he was more subtle than that. He couldnlt be 100% sure, but he thought that even the most dedicated professor would think that a ten foot essay was showing off. Instead, he had written one 5 feet long. Coming back to the matter at hand. he asked " I'll help, and does that trunk have a Boggart inside?", pointing to the trunk that was rattling.

"Yea, c'mon up," Sellaphix added sarcastically from beside him, "Tons of fun to be had." Ignan shot him a sidewards glance of disapproval for the cheek.

"I'll help, and does that trunk have a Boggart inside?" Harcroft offered, and pointed to the trunk.

"Step up Harcroft. Yes, it is a boggart," The Professor added in a conversational tone. "The third years will be encountering it this afternoon - do feel free to inform them of the horrors of how boggarts are flesh eating monsters and how there's been a few students lost when the boggart bit their head off. It makes teaching the younger students all the more interesting when they're already frightened with misinformation. Oliver has such a voracious imagination, its entertaining to see what she comes out with."

Turning to face both the students together he raised his wand.

"Again boys, the shield cast concurrently, and you will all observe the difference."

Pausing to wait for the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff to cast their shields together, Professor Storm repeated the actions again, and sure enough, when it came to concusso their shields held up, though as the window panes rattled again, he knew it had still given their shields a beating.

"Please return to your seats, Sellaphix, Harcroft." Professor Storm instructed and turned to the blackboard behind to explain the theory.
"Concurrent spell casting is much like two people stood beside each other yelling the same thing - the volume overall increases. The spell patterns match - even if one is slightly weaker than the other, they combine to form one spell of greater strength."

With chalk he sketched out two spells using wizarding notation[1] how the spells would add together as they matched.

"Is this clear, before you all take a chance to experiment?"

1.

The best way I can think to describe how he might draw it is by applying the physics of soundwaves - where waves add and increase the amplitude etc... but that's a quite unlikely explanation given Ignan's a wizard, and relatively unfamiliar with Muggle concepts of sine waves, or muggle science, which sets him apart from even his good friend Tapendra, an advocate of science. We'll settle for some unexplained notation of spells to skip round that analogy.

Josh frowned when Professor Storm went on about Winifred, he could see now why she seemed to think the professor was out to kill them all.Still, when Professor Storm cast the concusso, he yelled " Protego Durus", he thought it was at the same time as Fig, but his shield still barely held. was Professor Storm increasing the power of his concusso or something?!?

When Professor Storm explained how concurrent spells worked, Josh nodded, to show he understood. he had seen them befroe, his parents  had used concurrent spells to take down suspects before, the explanation answered how it worked though.

OOC Note:

No, you're taking the analogy too far, and missing the simplistic part I feel.

1+1 = 2, more than one person casting the same spell is a common concept in that it multiplies and increases the force of the spell by being cast together. Same as one speaker playing music is not as loud or clear as two speakers playing exactly the same thing, or three, or four.

Because this is the wizarding world, don't get too hung up on me using it as an analogy with soundwaves! I had meant it as clarification, but perhaps its not.

• two high pressures will reinforce each other*
• two low pressures will reinforce each other*
• a high pressure from one will cancel out a low pressure from the other **

* The same spell cast at the same time in the same direction then adds together.

** If two different spells were cast, then yes they'd conflict potentially like two different sounds do. This then leads us into curse breaking territory which we are to understand requires arithmancy, which indicates that spells have numerical value or number meaning behind them, to make calculations on the curses and counter curses. 

Callum watched carefully as Storm used Sellaphix and Harcroft to demonstrate his point. Common sense indicated that two people casting the same spell together would make it stronger. Unless the other person entirely mucked it up. He was vaguely curious as to what would happen if someone cast the spell- and the spell subsequently had some catastrophic failure.

He wasn't sure how many people in the class would trust him to cast a spell alongside them. He had been much less confrontational lately, leaving the dramatics to the quidditch field. Now that he was organizing the team, his aggression had a healthy outlet- and Callum had realized fighting his classmates wasn't going to get him anywhere except detention and a bad reputation which would follow him out of Hogwarts.

Of all the students who could have volunteered to join him in Professor Storm's Whacko Sideshow Game, Joshua Harcroft was his first choice - Josh knew his stuff, and subsequently they succeeded.  Just barely, but neither of them landed on their arses this time.

He clapped Josh on the back as they went back to their seats.  "Well good, mate."  Figaro wended his way through the rows of desks back to his seat.  The diagrams on the board were not helpful - he'd avoided Arithmancy for a reason, maths being chief in that decision.  Now Defense had numbers as well? Bad luck, that.

Fergie did not number among those who were disappointed in the possibility of more review work. During Storm's reign Fergie had found that any lesson involving wands had at least a 75% chance of being extremely unpleasant for him. But then Storm had to go and ruin Fergie's dreams of a peaceful lesson by saying they'd be doing practical application.

Sigh.

Watching with mild interest and more than a little trepidation (what was waiting for them this time?) as Figaro and Harcroft stood up against Storm's spell, Fergie decided one thing was for certain - he definitely wasn't going to be volunteering. Not that he'd planned to anyway. In this class any kind of voluntary participation just seemed like a bad idea. He slumped lower in his seat in an attempt to make himself as inconspicuous as possible, just in case Storm started pulling people to the front instead of waiting for a willing victim.

Of course, knowing his luck, when it came time for everyone to be paired up he'd end up partnered with Callum or one of the Dark twins or something equally disastrous anyway. He'd given up on catching a break in this class.

Sophie was a puffy, sniffling mess. It made absolutely no sense that she should be so upset; after all she had been the one to tell Fig they ought to end it. It had just ended so...badly; and watching him prance around the head of the classroom was not exactly how she wanted to spend the day. She ought to have faked sick. There was definitely something bad in the air, something she couldn't name but she could feel. It made her a little crazy...crazier than usual. She listened carefully to the Professor's explanation and copied down the notes on the board. It made sense; the hard part would be (at least it seemed to Sophie) matching someone else's level of intensity.

The only person she knew who could be as equally loud and boisterous was Figaro and they...were apparently not on speaking terms. Her fingers itched to hold her crystal ball, to shuffle her deck of Tarot cards - something, anything that would give her insight into this feeling of dread. It was too big to just be about Figaro or DADA or Professor Storm trying to murder them all. It hadn't actually been so bad since she stood up to him; at least she felt a sort of burgeoning respect for the man. There was, she was leaning, a method to his madness. Or, perhaps she simply believed that because she was feeling like a stark raving loon herself the last week.

Talia blushed furiously when Professor Storm held up the five foot long essay.  It wasn't hers, but it easily could have been.  Since she wasn't the greatest- or even really that decent- at the practical part of any class with spell casting, she tended to go all out with homework to keep her grades up.  She tilted her head down, staring intently at her desk and allowing her hair to hide her red cheeks. 

Eyes diverted, she still listened intently to the professor and finally looked up when he asked for volunteers.  Her heart started to thunder in her chest.  She would never volunteer for anything that required casting and she hoped that he wouldn't call on anyone to volunteer for them.  She wasn't looking forward to getting paired off for practice.  Her partners never did appreciate her attempts and she couldn't blame them.  If only this class had more hand to hand training.  Alas there wasn't much hand to hand one could do against the dark arts.  Hand to hand she had covered.

She watched all the casting, wishing that she could do half of what the other students had shown.  Her hair blew back over her shoulders as the concusso spell blew by.  She pulled a pencil out of her bag and quickly twisted her hair up and jabbed the pencil through it to keep it out of the way.

Resting his hands on his desk, he leaned over slightly and looked to the fifth years with a frown.
"You're all incredibly thoughtful this morning... makes one suspicious..." He stood up again behind his desk, wand in one hand, tip resting in the fingertips of the other.
"Practical application of the theory will help you understand this better. You will need to be in groups of three or four - two or three will perform the same shield charm together, and the remaining group member will attempt to break such. Compare to casting against one shield, two. Experiment with shields and types of attack, angle - give each other some space to work - the results may be akin to a healthy duelling club meeting. When you have the hang of things, we will perform a larger experiment... but only when you have all established enough control of concurrent casting. Timing is crucial."

Raising his wand as if to conduct the students as an orchestra, the desks drifted away to either side to clear space and the students formed their groups to experiment.

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OOC: Heat, smells, unusual vibration, dropping wands, two people forced to step aside from each other as shields break - lots of possibilities. Hold off on the concurrent cursing - we'll do that together in a bit

Also - reference from the next lesson in this room on this day:

"And do ignore the peculiar smell, it will dissipate, just had the fifth years performing co-operative magic." He made a face. "Excess magic sometimes causes elemental changes to the air, and of course, fifth years are at the hormonal, still not quite at the washing every morning stage."

As the professor sent them to work in groups, the light chatter started as the class began to negotiate.

Figaro looked around at his possible partners as his desk got up and left.  His eyes landed on Sophie and for a moment there was a lump in his throat.  She looked like a mess and he caught himself staring.  He tore his eyes away after an awkward pause.  He sucked in air through clenched teeth and turned towards....

"Fergie!"  He said sharply, hoping to rescue himself.  He gestured at the well-done-up Slytherin to come closer.  "Ferg.  I can't work with Sophie; be my partner."