wand and shield

[occluminous]

The semester wears on. Bella studies and flies and reads through the library elves' recommendations and accommodates Sherlock's sleep schedule. (Artemis Burberry is actually tolerable enough on any subject but Sherlock, and is more than happy to avoid him on occasions when Bella is around to sleep over with Tony for a night.) She gets A's in everything except Transfiguration; she gets a B there, because she eventually compromised with the teacher on the subject of live animals. Bella will work with bugs, but she wants to be very good at bugs before she messes with mice. Some of the mistakes the other students have made with their rodent subjects made her want to throw up, however easily they were put right.

She explains this compromise to Feral, when the semester changes over. She's just in the next segment of each of the core curriculum courses - no electives till seventh grade, when the brooms course is over with - but they'll have all different teachers and schedules and classmates. (Feral is still in her Defense course, and now so are Sherlock and Tony; she has the twins in brooms and theory, too, and Feral in potions.) "Bugs are really stupid and they have really simple nervous systems. You could probably get a B like I did if you would work on bugs."

Comments

[pythbox]

"Okay." He shrugs again. "I'll do that, then, I guess."

[occluminous]

"And then you won't have to be held back in transfig' any more."

[pythbox]

He grins. "Yeah, that'll be good."

[occluminous]

"I wonder if they'll skip you up to grade level or what."

[pythbox]

"Bet you they won't," he predicts.

[occluminous]

"Yeah, probably not, unless there's standardized tests for it later that I haven't heard about yet."

[pythbox]

"And if the standardized tests involve mice, I'm back to square one."

[occluminous]

"...That's true, I guess that's probably part of them being. Standardized."

[pythbox]

Feral shrugs.

[occluminous]

"Well, you could at least stop having to sit out entire lessons. You can get really really good at sixth grade stuff," she snorts. "And practice outside of classes, if you want to catch your own bugs and read other years' textbooks from the library, I dunno if you care enough."

[pythbox]

"I probably don't care enough," he says.

[occluminous]

"Oh well. At least I found a way around the problem. I'll even do mice once I'm good enough - I guess you can too when you grow out of the fire thing."

[pythbox]

"If I grow out of the fire thing," he snorts.

[occluminous]

"Did you ever ask the library elves to help you find stuff about it?"

[pythbox]

"Nah."

[occluminous]

"I might. Maybe there's something you can do to make it go away and none of the teachers have bothered looking for it, for some reason."

[pythbox]

"Knock yourself out," says Feral.

[occluminous]

Bella nods. She writes it down.

[pythbox]

He grins.

[occluminous]

New semester classes!

Mr. Phelps is the new Magical Defense teacher for the new mixed-up class that includes Bella, the Stark twins, and Feral. They all sit in a cluster close to the middle of the room, Sherlock and Bella in front of Tony and Feral.

[alicornucopia]

Mr. Phelps has them all take out their textbooks and begin reading the section on the distinctions between hexes, jinxes, curses, and lesser known categories of baleful spell. He wanders up and down the rows with his arms folded and his wand in his hand, peeping past his elbow, making sure everyone is reading.

Stroll.

Stroll.

He is also making preparations for a certain demonstration.

He passes in front of Sherlock.

[nobodyelse]

Sherlock blinks.

[occluminous]

When Mr. Phelps takes his next step, Bella seizes up in her chair.

It feels rather like a part of her body she didn't know she had has been thrust into unfriendly weather.

But it's wearing a raincoat.

She swats away the - spell, some kind of spell - and Mr. Phelps's eyes widen in surprise and his mouth opens a tiny bit - and she stands up out of her chair -

"What did you just try to do to me?"

[nobodyelse]

"A Memory Charm," Sherlock says softly.

[occluminous]

Bella shrieks.

"You tried to Memory Charm me? Why?!"